The situation described here implies that you have a HTML page, a table that only changes its data (so it doesn’t change table header or anything else in the page, just the numbers inside the table) and you need to make a lot of changes fast.

Sure, the easy option would be saving the file in Microsoft Excel software, and dealing with the way it looks afterwards. Or just a copy & paste from Excel to a CMS (Content Management System).

Say we have this file.

Unfortunately, whether you do copy & paste from Excel or you save as HTML, the result is this.

As you can see, a lot specifications and numbers, which make the tables difficult to manipulate:
<td align=”right”>1</td>
<tr height=”21″>
<td width=”47″>Losses</td>

Saving the file in Excel as HTML doesn’t yield any better results.

The code looks even uglier:
<tr height=20 style=’height:15.0pt’>
<td height=20 style=’height:15.0pt’></td>
<td>Game A</td>
<td align=right>2</td>
<td align=right>1</td>
<td align=right>1</td>
<td align=right>3</td>
<td align=right>0</td>
<td align=right>4</td>
</tr>

What to do?

One solution would be taking the code and using a solution to strip the unnecessary code (a HTML editor, a search & replace macro in Word, etc.).

The solution below is different: I will take the data in Excel, place it in Word, run a macro, and get a valid code.

The very first thing to do is open up this file. You should either allow macros to run if you’re on Microsoft Office 2007, or set the proper security level to allow macros (Tools => Options => Security => Macro Security will work for 2003 version).

Then you should copy the macros that are attached to the file to your local computer. How to do that?

In Word 2003: Tools => Macro => Macros => Organizer
In Word 2007: View => Macros => View macros => Organizer

Here you copy from left to right:

That’s it, now you have macros in your Word software.

(optional) You can assign an icon to the toolbar for fast launch of the macro you’ve just copied. For this, click the drop-down option in the ribbon, and select More commands (for Office 2007):

Or right-click a toolbar and select “Customize toolbars”;

For Office 2007, see below:

and just copy from left to right and assign an icon;

For Office 2003, you go to Commands, then macros, and via drag & drop, you drag the macro to the toolbar, rename it and give it an icon.

Details here.

So, after the macro has been installed, see the solution:
1. Select the table in Microsoft Excel and Copy;

2. In Microsoft Word either do Paste (a small arrow underneath the button) => Paste Special in Microsoft Word 2007 or Edit => Paste Special … in earlier versions; Ctrl + Alt + V also works just fine;

Select Unformatted text, Ok;

3. Launch the macro via either the toolbar button or View => Macros => View macros => Select “Replace_table” => Run (for Office 2007) or Tools => Macros => Macro => Select the macro => Run (for Office 2003);

4. Copy the code into the CMS.

The code will look like this:

And this is how I would make a code based on an Excel file.

The presentation

You can download the presentation: PPT, PPTX, PDF.

The video

Vezi mai multe video din Evenimente

The presentation outline (with italics you’ll see my annotations):

How do YOU do it?

Contents

A. Why there are no magical solutions?

B. The hardware
PC vs. smartphone
PC vs. laptop
- An article on How to Ergonomically Set Up Your Laptop as a Desktop;
Monitor
- Why wide screen? See this article – Benefits Of Widescreen Computer Monitors;
- Article – Tips & Tweaks: Two Monitors Are Way Better Than One;
Keyboard
- The standard keyboard I like;
Camera & microphone
Chair
- You may want to read this article: What is an “ergonomic” chair?

C. The habits
Multi tasking
- You can read Multitasking May Not Mean Higher Productivity;
Reading email
- See the Inbox Zero video;
Typing
- I use touch typing;
Learning shortcuts
- Windows XP keyboard shortcuts;
Learning software options
- You can read my tutorial (in Romanian) on installing Windows XP Service Pack 3; a lot of software options in there;
Turning off distractions
Running less programs
Running more programs
- I mentioned Rescue Time;
- I talked about Last.fm Scrobbler;

D. The knowledge
Reading:

• Lifehacker;
• Getting Things Done;
• Zen Habits;

Research everything:

• how to search - see this search; also, I plan a big article on this subject on Get SEO ideas in a few months;
• how to research - search like this;
• how to breathe better – Google search;
• how to be more attentive – Google it;
• how to type – search;

Contact

Any other ideas?

1. First step – download IrfanView (you can also get the plugins, but for the current operation you only need IrfanView);
2. Install it in your computer (be careful not to install also Google Toolbar); when installing, you don’t need to associate IrfanView with images (so, you may have IrfanView installed, but you don’t need to open images with it if you don’t like this);
3. Start the program;
4. File => Batch Conversion / Rename;
5. Browse your folder with picture;
6. Either select some photos and hit Add or hit Add all to add all the pictures for batch processing;
7. Work as => Batch conversion;
8. Output format => I generally prefer JPG, and go to options and set the quality to 80;
9. Check “Use advanced options (for bulk resize …);
10. Advanced; Set one or both sides to Width 604 and Height 480; Check both Preserve aspect ratio and Use resample function; Ok;
11. Output directory for result file => In this I put some folder for output of the pictures;

You can see all the settings I’ve made here:

I hope you’ll find resizing photos easier now.

In this blog post I’ll share my views on taskwriter.com web site.

What I like about the web site?

1. The Gmail-like interface in lite module;
2. Everything just works; this may sound as a typical thing, but I don’t think this is really true; I’ve seen countless times things that just don’t work the way it should be; this web site does his job;
3. I like the format of the links: blue text, underlined, on a white background; that’s just great!
4. I love the keyboard short-cuts;
5. I love the integration with Google Calendar;

What I’d improve?

1. I can’t properly use the Back button on my browser; Gmail uses AJAX, yet this problem is not there;
2. Unlike Gmail, in the software I can’t delete a task, even if it was just an example created by you;
3. Let’s say I add a task; in Gmail, I would always have the option of creating a label or folder, even in the “Add new task” mode; here I can’t seem to be able to add a new folder or label, while adding a new task;
4. Look at this list:
1
2
3
4
..
9
10
You can sort this list in Linux way:
1
10
2
3
..
9
Or you cans sort it it Windows way:
1
2
3
..
9
10
As you see, Linux doesn’t know that 10 > 9; in Linux 1, 10, 2, 3, is a perfectly fine order; if I were you; I’d adopt Windows-style sorting;
To check the both systems, make folders from 1 to 10 and sort them by name in both Windows and Linux and see what I mean;
Note: I have nothing against no operating system; not in this blog post;
5. I would love to have an undo option after each operation I do;
6. To me, the affiliate link is to obviously intrusive;
7. When I want to go home, I tend to click on the logo; here, it doesn’t work;
8. Opera browser has this great feature: let’s say they want to make a shortcut for something in a menu; but the menu for bookmarks is changeable; and they do this lovely thing: even if I have in the menu a set of bookmarks, they assign a keyboard shortcut for each menu entry; you can copy this by assigning keyboard shortcuts even for elements that continuously change;
9. In lite view, in FireFox, if I have a lot of tasks displayed, it ruins the view; the bottom row of buttons (complete, archive, edit, move) doesn’t seem to be displayed nicely;
10. Let’s say I’m in lite view mode for a specific list; when I switch to full-view, I’d prefer to have that specific list view again; this doesn’t happen;
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.

_____
Bottom line: I like the experience of taskwriter.com web site a lot. There are some things to be improved, but it’s a pretty nice web site. If you’d like to try the solution, by following this link you get 3% off.

First of all, to understand the problem, a photo generally has 1-3 MB right from the camera. Even if compressed to 80% quality JPEG at a maximum 1600 pixels resolution, the picture still has a few hundred kilobytes (the compressed folder had 350 Megabytes, quite big). The problem is, thus, uploading large amount of data to Facebook (it takes time).

But Facebook is different – it only allows you to put pictures with a width of 720 pixels, and a height of 720. Thus, all I had to do was doing a batch resize (I used Irfanview, but there are plenty of other options) of all the pictures, with a maximum resolution of 604×480. With some 80% JPEG compression, at the end I had this result:
1,000 photos with 58 Megabytes!

Thus, it was very easy to upload the photos – only 58 megabytes of data for 1,000 photos.

PS: If you don’t know how to batch resize photos using IrfanViews, see this tutorial.

Update: The old resolution of 604×480 has changed to 720×720. Cool.

Let’s suppose that:
a. You are looking for a business theme;
b. You want to make a web site, rather than a blog from WordPress;
c. Your customers are very quiet, and calm and don’t appreciate aggressive tones;
d. You have a simple web site.

How to pick?

A. Number of columns

If you have a very simple presentation web site, with no more than 10 pages, you should pick a layout with two-columns or even go for a theme with one-column only (for a presentation web site). Do you have a presentation web site with either more than 15 pages or you wish to have on each page things like a contact form, a slideshow with pictures? Then you may wish to pick for a three-column theme.

This is how various WordPress themes look in:
a. One column (in the list you will also see some two columns themes, ignore these);
b. Two columns;
c. Three columns;

If you have a simple web site with 5 pages, you need a one-column theme. If you have between 5 and 15 pages, or you wish to have an element present on each page of the web site (an ad, a contact form, some call-to-action like a newsletter), opt for a two-column theme. Having a complex web site? Opt for a three-column web site.

Bottom line: look for one-column or two-column themes and avoid three columns themes for simple web sites. Do look for three-column themes on complex web sites.

B. Color themes

I suggest avoiding themes that put emphasis on dark colors. For further diving into the subject, I recommend these readings:

• Color Preferences in Web Design
• Using Color in Web Design
• Light text on dark background vs. readability

Long story kept short, dark colored text on light backgrounds are easier to read and are generally considered more trustworthy.

I also prefer avoiding either high-contrast themes (black on white is a powerful contrast, while gray on white is a less powerful one) or powerful colors (intense yellow).

Bottom line: look for themes with predominantly light colored backgrounds.

C. Things to consider

If you have a web site with a lot of pictures (each page / blog post has a picture), you may wish to opt for a magazine-style WordPress theme.

Also, if you can cut something from a web site / blog design, then cut it. I personally like a simple web site – one menu? Fine. Two menus? Fine. Three menus? No-no. Also, avoid banners if you can, avoid adding a blogroll (put the blogroll in a separate page, with description of each link you give out), avoid using unimportant widgets (I have yet failed to find a useful widget). Make it easier for your reader to find information, thus don’t complicate the design. This doesn’t mean not having a single call-to-action. By all means, put a “Call us now” button, put a newsletter subscription service, add a link (link, not widget) to Facebook or Twitter, but keep things simple and not more than two (I recommend one) call-to-action on a page.

D. What can be changed in a WordPress theme?

If you see something in a WordPress theme that’s text, that usually can be changed / removed easily.

In this picture:

and this picture:

all you see is text. Even the search button is text. Text can easily be changed in WordPress themes. If you wish to remove any text, move it around, it’s fine and easy.

Now have a look at this:

and this:

I marked all the elements that are pictures (in the first picture the background, the title, the RSS / Twitter icons, the search button – not the search text, but the search button – the emoticon and the avatars, while in the second picture the Older entries button and again RSS / Twitter – only the icons, not the surrounding text).

Now, what can be changed in a theme?
a. Text – easily anything;
b. Images – if you wish to replace them with other images for which you have copyright – that’s easy;
c. Images – if you wish to transform them (so for example, change the “Fii eficient” title to “Be efficient” – well, that’s a bit more complicated); Another not-so-easy transformation would involve changing the colors of images (making a blue image look red is easy; Making a blue image look red and still have a natural look, not a distorted one – that’s hard);
d. Images – adding a logo; Not very easy, but not that hard; And since it’s important, it must be done; On the other hand, changing an existing image into a logo of same size – that’s easy;
e. Structure – The themes above are two columns; Want to make them three columns or one column? That’s not that easy;
f. Structure – Do you wish to remove the header (title) totally, do you wish to remove some parts of the columns? That’s rather easy;
g. Colors – Do you wish to make the blue pink and the black gray? That’s a bit hard, but can be done; Pay attention to matching colours;

E. Paid or free themes

If you aren’t bothered that your theme:
a. Has no technical support;
b. Must keep copyright notice in the footer (I’m assuming you’re ethical and don’t remove this, even if you technically can do that);
c. Is used by other people in the world (we’re talking about thousand of other web sites for popular themes);
Then you can opt for a free theme.

On the other hand, if you’re willing to pay for:
a. Technical support and upgrades (though editing the themes will make updates hard to implement each time there is a theme update);
b. Lack of copyright notice;
c. Limited usage by other web sites (much fewer persons pay for themes);
Then go for a premium theme.

If you really want your theme to be unique on the web, opt for a custom design.

F. What free themes to pick?

There are literally thousands of theme to pick from. I put only one criteria (to be released in 2009 or later) and got this list of themes:
a. A collection of theme collections (yeah, that’s a lot) – 2009 WordPress Themes Collection;
b. A list of themes for 2009 – The Best Free WordPress Themes of 2009;
c. A list of 10 themes of 2010 – Top 10 Free WordPress Themes for 2010.

G. What paid themes to pick?

If you want a custom design, have a look at this search.

If you want a single theme, I suggest you to have a look at Template monster and look for paid theme collections on the web.

If you want to buy more than a single theme, I suggest you to have a look at this article on Top 10 Premium WordPress Theme Providers and choose a WordPress theme provider which can offer you a good price for buying more than one theme.

I also can’t help stop mentioning WP Zoom, for their great support for my theme.

Finally, if you wish a see a demo on what you can do with a WordPress theme, see this web site. (you can always pick another theme from the sidebar)

You would only listen to BB parts, and AA and CC would be ignored.

The solution: Great news! The solution for this exists: just install EPS High-End System skin in WinAmp, activate it, and press the DEMO button (three buttons left of the horizontal scrollbar of the song). Chose your preferred option (mine is 1/3 of track length at middle).

The theme I’ve won is Magnet theme.

My blog went through a dramatic change, see below:

As you can see, my blog looks much better with the new theme installed. How was my collaboration with WP Zoom?

• The team responded to all of my requests fast;
• I got all the support I needed from them;
• The timing was impecable;
• The actual result of their work (the theme) looks great.

I tweaked the theme quite a bit:
a. Links are underlined in blog posts;
b. Removed all the featured posts stuff;
c. Removed the bar with categories;
d. Removed the author info;
e. Modified the sidebar quite a lot;
f. Added subscribe by email in the footer;
g. Modified the subscribe links in the footer (strangely, they are not the ones in the header, with Feedburner, they are the default blog’s feeds);
h. Removed the “Add to Twitter” link (it used the long URL, and my blog posts have huge URLs, so I had to give it up);
i. Edited the RSS links;
j. Added a page for comments rules;
k. Edited the header;
l. Edited the social networks links;

I really enjoyed my collaboration with WP Zoom. Thanks Pavel CIORICI!

A. Music

You can see my Last FM profile to have an idea on what music I like. Especially look for top artists and top tracks.

B. Articles on the Internet

English-only: I share on Google Reader stuff about search engine optimization (link). Other than SEO, I especially like these blogs: Penelope TRUNK’s Brazen Careerist (feed) and Zen Habits (feed).

English and Romanian: But you can also see the things I share on Google Reader from other fields as well (link). The top things I read and come across upon, I share on my Twitter page.

C. Books

Regarding books, to read, I strongly recommend “Essentials of Understanding Psychology” by Robert S. Feldman (in English). In Romanian, you can see “Happiness Diary” by Nicolae STEINHARDT.

D. Movies

From all the movies I’ve seen, I strongly recommend you to see Le Notti di Cabiria (another comment on the movie of mine).

That’s it. A Happy New Year!

I think that the difference between virtual and real life is mostly seen in communication (spoken in life versus written on the Internet). Why is that? In real life communication I can be happy and I can transmit with all my senses the way I’m feeling to the other person. On the Internet, I have, at most, some jokes, some bad words and some emoticons. But most of the time is a my-oh-my very much impersonal communication, mostly in a serious manner (or at least perceived that way). So the toughest difference comes from what is virtual life mostly about – communication.

But where is it only a fine line between virtual and real? I think there are a few domains that follow this condition:
a. Movies – yes, it’s better to see them at the cinema, you are on a chair, large room, some smell, some taste (pop corn and drinks), some social engagement (laughs, movements, scary moments); but all-in-all you can get an almost-as-good experience right from the comfort of your own home; Get some friends and it’s even better;
b. Music – Sure, the atmosphere in a Opera house, in a disco or at a concert can’t be reproduce; But reproducing music in a digital era gets quite simpler; Again, social part can be a different experience in real life;
c. Reading – Yes, I know, a book is generally better for the eye, for the posture, for the feeling of yet; And you might remember more things while reading a real book rather than an e-book; In the same time, finding things to read (not necessarily books) on the Internet is quite easy and find it one of the pleasures in life;
d. Typing – I write pretty fast and I can type with about the same speed; It’s not the same thing, but I can get a good sensation while typing on the keyboard; But the structure of words that is formed inside my mind is pretty much the same;
e. Digital photography – I have no photos in my room, other than those for diplomas and IDs; And I miss none; I can’t quite compare the sensation of watching a digital photograph or a printed one, but I do compare the space of a digital photo on my hard drive versus the space of a real stack of photos on my desk;
f. Communicating via headphones and microphone versus meeting live – Communicating live has some obvious advantages (body language, a broader view, a clearer transmission of data, a better hearing option); But when talking with some very close persons like this, I can get a pretty real feeling; Anyhow, it’s much better than typing.

I think these are pretty much the most important things that are similar in life with those on the Internet.

Coming back to the experience of sitting in front of a PC – is it real or virtual? The chair I sit on, the desk, the computer, me – are all real -, but my imagination is trapped in a virtual world. I think that’s the difference. Or at least until I hear some loud sounds on my opened window.

How do you feel about this blog post on virtual and real life experiences?

That’s simple, I can give you two solutions for that:
1. Contact that online store via email and tell them you have a problem with the warranty of a product; See the response time, the way they handle the situation, the solution they offer to you; You’ll get a glimpse on what’s behind that store before you use it; You can use a fake e-mail for this;
2. Ask the store owner for a less-than-usual solution; I personally asked two online stores for this: I wanted to gradually buy all the components from that online store, they should keep them for a 6 weeks tops, and when I get all those components, they should assembly my PC; One store was reluctant and answered my query after about two weeks, the other one answered fast and agreed to my request (it was a computer worth about 5-600 Euros and the store was not the cheapest in town).

Both solution can fail: the owners of those stores can lie to you and only claim that they will solve the warranty and only claim that they will help you (pretend that they are in fact trustworthy when they’re not). But in most cases, I think that these are good solutions to find out how the employees of an online store will treat you.

Oh, and you can also just ask for this information from other sources (from real friends to virtual communities), you don’t really have to find out this on your own.

How do you feel about this blog post of mine?

So, how to solve the problem?

I have two simple solutions for this problem and they both involve one thing: don’t let FireFox steal focus on its startup. So when starting FireFox, it shouldn’t have focus, and the very first time you let FireFox have focus, my solution magically vanishes.

First of all, make sure FireFox is not running. Then, do the following. These are the two alternative solutions (different options):
1. Open FireFox and very-very fast (or a bit slower if you have time) press Windows + D to show the desktop; alternatively, you can click the “Show Desktop” icon in the tray; if things go well, FireFox should start minimized and without focus;
2. Open FireFox and then again very fast open another application. The new application should have focus, while FireFox launches in background.

Now you can switch to ThunderBird and no matter how many links you click on it, FireFox won’t steal focus (hopefully). Please remember not to switch to FireFox, or you’ll have to repeat the procedure of starting FireFox.

Does this help you?

Update: another solution has been provided by ciccio in the comments: Open Firefox, type about:config, and, with care (you might want to do a back-up first), set browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground to True.

Here’s the official announcment of this job title (I just formatted the text):

“We at Lionbridge www.lionbridge.com are continuing to work to improve the quality and recognition of languages by expanding our collection of data (emails, reports (articles, thesis, and college reports), letters and blogs) to help develop language tools e.g. spell checker and increase the word count for your language. To do this, we are collecting data from many people world-wide.

To check if you qualify please answer the following questions:

• Do you write and save your sent emails in your native language?
• Do you write or maintain a personal blog?
• Are you in college in college and write / save your draft reports?
• Are you a journalist and save your draft articles?
• Are you interested in earning additional money on work already completed?

If you have answered yes to any of the above questions, then congratulations! You have passed the first step of qualification. Please contact datacol.bal@lionbridge.com  and we will help you to find out more details and provide you with out FAQ. All replies must be returned in English please.”

So, if you qualify, you know what to do. Let me give you a few hints on Lionbridge:
1. From my experience, they are a serious employer, they will pay you for you results, no question asked; they are assertive, and will provide you with technical help;
2. I don’t think they’d compromise their image, so your data is pretty much secure;
3. You should choose carefully if you wish to enter the program for email data; the emails must have been written by you, they can’t be text that are found easily on the Internet;
4. You should especially adhere to this program if you have a large quantity of emails written personally by you; the payment is proportional with the amount of emails you have;
5. (if you’re a Romanian reading this) Romanian-language specific characters (ăîâşţ) are not a must, but they are preferred.

Having read all these, I wish you best of luck if you decide to apply for this program.

1. What’s a botnet?
In one sentence, botnets are software applications that are executed autonomously on a computer.

Botnets can be controlled from distance, and since they can run autonomously, their power is quite large. The power of a bot is usually used for criminal activity. In computer terms, a botnet is generally represented by programs such as worms and trojans. The criminal activity that worms and trojans can do are: sending SPAM messages (SPAM emails are bulk messages that are not solicited), installing spyware, installing malware, click fraud, denial-of-service or presenting advertisements on the victim’s computer.

The term “botnet” comes from a combination of “robot” and “network” (thus a “network of robots”).

You can compare a Botnet with a terrorist group: they have a leader, they act with a purpose and their actions are autonomous. The leader can control the group from distance, and in most cases the terrorist group has bad intentions. Like in the real world, for botnets and terrorists, measures can be taken. You will find more on this at the end of the article.

2. What does a botnet do?
A botnet can be used to send SPAM messages via email to other computers. A computer infected by a botnet can also have a lot of advertisements for the owner of the computer itself (adware).

It can also be used to attacks on a computer, called denial-of-service (a lot of computers infected with bots access an Internet service, so that the target system becomes busy).

The owner of a computer infected with a bot can become a victim of spyware (these bots spy on the user’s activity, and provide to the owner of the bots private information).

Malware may also be installed. Malware is designed to damage a computer.

Yet another method is click fraud: the owner of a computer infected by a bot visits some web sites, just for the purpose of advertising (so the user not only sees an advertisement, but sees whole web sites).

3. The story behind a botnet – how it’s made and who does it
How is a bot made? First a small recap: botnets are software applications that are executed autonomously on a computer. Thus, as you can imagine, the software application must be first programmed by someone. So, the very first step is for someone with bad intentions to write software that does bad things.

The second step is for that software to get into a victim’s PC. The botnet and viruses are similar in this aspect: you can get a botnet from a friendly-looking email, from a web site or via a software download. There are a lot of ways to get either a botnet or a virus.

After the victim user gets infected with the bot, the bot contacts a web server (or an IRC server). This server is called command-and-control (C&C) server. Now the server can control the application on the victim’s computer.

The bot creator has some deals with persons with bad intentions: spammers, some advertisers, criminal organizations. Since the bot creator is in control of the bot on the victim’s computers, it can command it to do evil actions.

Finally, the bot server autonomously executes the given command.

4. Who does a botnet?
A criminal organization can create a botnet by itself, but generally botnets are done by software programmers. They don’t mind making illegal software as long as they are paid heavily.

A famous example of a bot net is “The Storm botnet” or “Storm worm botnet”. This is a botnet that was linked by the Storm Worm, a Trojan horse spreading via email. The size of the Storm botnet is estimated to hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of computer systems.

The Storm botnet was used for different criminal activities. Some of the main targets of the botnet have been the online operations of security vendors and researchers (because they attempted to investigate the botnet).

5. How can one control a botnet?
The control of a botnet is done via Internet. A person holding a server (on a web page or IRC channel) commands a large number of botnets on the computers of victims via Internet.

Often when a Bot joins an IRC channel it will log in with a password. This prevents control from other people.

6. Real life solution for protecting against botnets
The first thing to do is know about botnets. You can then take the decision if your personal data are important to you, if you want to let your computer be used for SPAM (to others and even to you), denial-of-service-attacks and click fraud. You may decide that these are not important to you, but knowing more about the risks is the first thing to do.

If you decide that you should be more attentive to botnets, you should have a better care over what you allow to run on your computer. You should have the latest version of the browser (and update it regularly) and most of all don’t visit just any web site. Crack and warez web sites are known for distributing malware software, including botnets. When you are on chat rooms you should not accept any file (a file with multiple extensions, like file.avi.zip or file.mp3.scr might be a botnet).

Even with care from your side, some software does get executed on your local machine. To add an extra security, you should use an Internet Security suite. This is a very good measure to protect your computer against botnets. Even better is to update your Internet Security from time to time, or let it automatically update.

7. Bibliography
I’ve read and used resources from:
1. Botnet article on Wikipedia;
2. Honeynet article on bots;
3. Definition of botnet on SearchSecurity.com;
4. Article on Microsoft.com on zombies and botnets;
5. FAQ on botnets by techFAQ;
6. Robot Wars – How Botnets Work article;
7. Botnets, Hackers and SPAM (OH MY!) article on OnGuard Online.

What’s for you to read in this blog post?
1. What would be a small, personal, definition of Web 2.0?
2. Some basic things on the Web 2.0 technology. Uuu, we’re going into geeky stuff
3. What are some Web 2.0 functions and how to use them?
4. Ok, ok, I wish to implement some Web 2.0. What’s the first step to be made?

1. What would be a small, personal, definition of Web 2.0?
Considering technology, a lot of Web 2.0 is done in AJAX. Very simple, the definition of Web 2.0 would have thus just one word: “AJAX”. But AJAX isn’t the defining term for Web 2.0, it’s just a widespread technology for such sites. You can have a Web 2.0 web site with no AJAX. So, it’s not a full definition.
So, what’s the definition? “User generated content.” Hmm. I consider the definition itself rather boring, and I redefine it. “User involvement”. If you manage to involve your visitors and convert them into users that are active on your web site, you’re in the Web 2.0 world.

2. Some basic things on the Web 2.0 technology. Uuu, we’re going into geeky stuff
I like to think that JavaScript in general, and AJAX in particular, are specific to Web 2.0; Actually, they’re not; But you may wish to note that in the future, web will evolve, and AJAX is a likely direction; What does Web 2.0 imply right now in terms of technology? There’s two aspects I noticed:
1. On one hand lack of new technology; “OK, you lost me there” (you might say), “how come a site has AJAX and is not filled with technology?” Well, think of it like this; What will an advanced-technology alternative to AJAX be? Flash you say? I think Flash is a bit more:
a. power consuming;
b. technology advanced;
than AJAX; So, for old computers (or mobile devices?) with less computational power, AJAX is better; Lack of new technology (Flash) is great for the brand new (what a conflict!) Web 2.0;
2. On the other hand, is one thing I like to call “lack of reload”; GMail loads the interface once, and from time to time it refreshes the list of emails; But when going from one message to another, GMail doesn’t load the whole interface plus the message; Just like you would normally expect a desktop application, GMail only loads the messages itself; Or let’s take Google Maps: You can scroll, zoom-in, navigate a map without ever reloading the page; That’s great on AJAX: you don’t need to refresh the page, you just bring in the useful stuff.

So, if I were to build a new site, taking advantage of new technologies, I’d skip trouble-with-loading-and-after-loading Flash, and go to easy-to-load-easy-to-process AJAX.

3. What are some Web 2.0 functions and how to use them?
1. RSS is not user generated content; but my definition of Web 2.0 is larger – if it involves the user (and RSS does this), then it’s Web 2.0; Ok, I consider RSS to be Web 2.0; This is for reading;
2. Comments – this is rather boring and old, but I’d love to see more online shops have the guts to allow any comment on their web site; This is for getting involved;
3. Interactive Maps – instead of just putting a map on the contact page, what about providing an embedded map with all the expected functions such as zoom? Isn’t it great? This is for interaction in navigation;
4. “Send to”; This is easy; I visit a web site and I want to send to a friend some emotions after visiting the web site; I can send my friend the link to the page; I cand send it via email (and you, the creator of the web site, should make it very simple for me to this); This is for spreading the message.

Those are just some examples. Here are some others, following the above pattern:
1. Reading; RSS can also be a boring newsletter or a more fresh blog; There are alternatives;
2. Getting involved; Rather than just posting a comment, how about posting full-size articles? Wikipedia lets me do it, why don’t you?
3. Interaction in navigation; Interactive maps? How about some YouTube clips on your web site? If you have an online shop, you can make small videos with your products; It takes some guts, doesn’t it?
4. How about spreading the message? I can post it on other Web 2.0 web sites (social networks, social bookmarking web sites, social news); There are multiple ways to send the information from here; You should help me to this; I can send it via Instant Messaging; You can post the link to the page on Twitter (a combination between social network, microblogging, and instant messaging); You can have a huge list of options.

4. Ok, ok, I wish to implement some Web 2.0. What’s the first step to be made?
I think that the first thing to change if you wish for a Web 2.0 is your attitude. Technical skills come easy after this. So, what should you change?
1. Change your attitude towards the visitor; Your visitor is something to be used, it’s a resource; Don’t treat it like the end of chain; it can integrate into your life;
2. Change the attitude towards your web site; You should see it as something to load as few times as possible, using new technology, yet easy to computate; Finally, your web site should be interactive, and not static (did I hear you say “boring”?);
3. Change the attitude towards you (and your company); You should have the guts to allow commenting on the web site; You should allow yourself to be present on YouTube clips.

If some of above seem to radical, lower the standards. But at least do try to find out more on Web 2.0!

1. What does my software do?
My PHP add-on does one single trick: helps you put HTML emails. It works great with Gmail (tested it a lot on some of my blogs, see the end of this blog post), and it works not-so-bad with Yahoo! Mail (only done a few tests, though).
It also try to fix a bug of WordPress for breaking posts that contain Unicode characters.

2. What does my software doesn’t do?
Unicode characters are a big pain for WordPress. There are some characters which are poorly converted. This problem is also common for sending emails. What’s the solution? I’ll present my case story: whenever I send an email that has Unicode characters, I first try to convert those Unicode characters into ASCII. This can be solved quite easily in Notepad (under Windows Operating System). Just create a blank document in Notepad, put the Unicode text in there. Save it. Notepad usually warns you that if you want don’t save as Unicode, you’ll lose some formatting. Hit Ok, then reopen the document. Most Unicode texts are gone. There are still some problems (quotes, for example, are not converted) and for those … I’ve created a different software. See the blog post in here.

3. How can you personalize the blog to work only for your email address?
You can replace this line:
if (( is_email($author) ) && ($author == ‘PUTYOUREMAILADDRESSINHERE@SOMEMAIL.COM’)) {

with this line:
if ( is_email($author) ) {

Also, replace these two lines:
// Author not found in DB, set status to pending.  Author already set to admin.
$post_status = ‘publish’;
with these two lines:
// Author not found in DB, set status to pending.  Author already set to admin.
$post_status = ‘pending’;

Finally, replace these three lines:
if (!$userdata) {
$post_author = 1;
$author_found = false;
with these three lines:
if (!$userdata) {
$post_author = 1;
$author_found = true;

4. What should you note?
I am not responsible for errors you might encounter with your software. You can leave a comment below and explain your errors, and I’ll see what I can do, you can post your errors on WordPress’s support page or search its archives. Please note that this is my very first software in PHP and I’ve learned the commands mostly by trial and error.

5. Ok, ok, where’s the software? Download link?
You can download my software in here:
wp-mail.php made by Olivian BREDA. Use at your own risk

Use it at your own risk.

6. How do you know it works?
Well, I’ve tested it for a few months now. These are the blogs where I’ve tested my software:

• Fii eficient! – Blog despre eficienta
• Conferinte. Blogul WordPress
• Grupul Fotografilor Interesati de Concursuri (gfic)
• Ortodoxie – blog despre evenimente ortodoxe

What can you read on this specific blog post?
1. What’s the best use for my software?
2. Alternative: How can you convert Unicode texts into ASCII fast?
3. What does my software do?
4. How to install it?
5. How to use it? (basic)
6. How to change settings? (basic)
7. How to change settings? (advanced)
8. Replacement matrix (what my software replaces)

1. What’s the best use for my software?
I greatly use this software for posting via email on my blogs.

You can also use it before sending emails. Mailing lists will just love your new messages.

2. Alternative: How can you convert Unicode texts into ASCII fast?
First of all, don’t use my software if you want fast conversion.

This can be done quite easily in Notepad (under Windows Operating System). Just create a blank document in Notepad, put the Unicode text in there. Save it. Notepad usually warns you that if you want don’t save as Unicode, you’ll lose some formatting. Hit Ok, then reopen the document. Most Unicode texts are gone. There are still some problems (quotes, for example, are not converted) and for those … I’ve created this blog post.

3. What does my software do?
My software does this trick: it looks for a text file on the desktop, file called a.txt, opens it, looks for some Unicode characters, and replaces them after a pattern. See the end of the file for the default replacement matrix.

4. How to install it?
First, download my software from here:
Software for changing files from Unicode into ASCII.

After download, extract the archive. Place the resulting folder somewhere you won’t move often (Program Files is a good option. Another folder that won’t get removed after Windows reinstallations is even better).

What’s next? The file ‘!Remove diacritics.bat – adapt the text in this file, then use it and put shortcut to it.bat’ can and should be edited. Right click on it and choose “Edit”. You’ll have to update the paths according to the paths on your hard drive. You can then rename the batch file to a shorter name like the simple ‘diacritics.bat’.

Then create a shortcut for the diacritics.bat and put it on the desktop (holding Ctrl + Shift and dragging the batch file to the desktop will do the trick). Move the shortcut where you’ll like it best (quick launch, start menu) or leave it on the desktop. Rename it if you wish, and you can pick another icon from the Properties of the software.

That’s it!

5. How to use it? (basic)
Create a file called a.txt and put it on the desktop and close it. Launch my software via the shortcut. Open the brand new a.txt file. It’s now converted.

6. How to change settings? (basic)
You can edit the replacement matrix yourself. There is a aschars.txt text file with the following structure: a long list of rows. In each row there are two codes: the first one is the character you wish to change, while the second code is the character you wish to change into. You can see the current replacement matrix at the end of this blog post.

Let’s say you wish to edit my matrix. How do you know what are the ASCII codes for the characters? Well, I’ve done an utility especially for that. In the self-explaining “Utility” folder you’ll find a new piece of software. All you have to do is edit a text file (named, again, a.txt). You put in there all the characters whose code you wish to know. You can simply put two chars: a character you wish to change (let’s have for example this one: „), and the resulting character (let’s say is this one: “). My software will then create a text file with the two ASCII codes. Only then you update the replacement matrix and that’s it.

7. How to change settings? (advanced)
If you wish to edit the REMDIAC.PAS software, all you have to do is download the Pascal compile from the Antique Software: Turbo Pascal v5.5 page, extract the archive, install Pascal, and open the Pas file. You can then pick the Compilation destination to disk instead of memory and open my Pas file. Open the .pas file you wish to edit (that’s the source file for the software) and don’t forget to compile it after editing.

What you should note? My software does a little trick. For the “…” character, the program has to put three dots. It has a special procedure for this. If you wish to update the software, just add a new line below this one:
133: Begin c := Chr (46); Write (ies, c); Write (ies, c); End;
The first number represents the Unicode code (133) and the second one is the ASCII code for the dot (46).

Another setting you may wish to change is the default path for Windows. My software assumes there is a ‘C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe’ file, but you may wish to change this.

You can change other things in my software, as you wish.

8. Replacement matrix (what my software replaces)
This is the characters my software replaces and the resulting characters. In the left there is the Unicode character, in the right the corresponding ASCII character:

„  →  “
„  →  “
…  →  ...
“  →  “
”  →  “
•  →  *
–  →  -
«  →  “
·  →  *
»  →  “
  →  A
É  →  E
Π →  I
â  →  a
ã  →  a
é  →  e
î  →  i
ï  →  i
ó  →  o
ô  →  o
ö  →  o
ü  →  u

Some of the chracters are specific for the Romanian language.

I hope you’ll enjoy using my software.

I’ve done a RSS file with my signatures that I wish to share with you. Also the method for having it online.

My personal observations:
Length of a line: 93 characters (with spaces included);
Maximum signatures in the file: 9.

Here’s how you do it:
First you might want to test my RSS file in your browser – set your signature RSS to this address:
http://fiieficient.com/gfic/wp-admin/js/zzztestsignature.rss
Press Compose once, then yet another time (Gmail first shows the original signature of yours; do a new compose, and another new compose)
If no change, try to reload gmail in browser (FireFox 2+ or Internet Explorer 7, right?)
After reload, try compose, then another compose. You should see the new 9 signatures randomly.

Did the test work? Now this is how you do your file by yourself:
1. Put the line below (via copy paste) in a new Notepad document and create up to 9 signatures in there, no signature exceeding the number of characters below:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 abcdefghijklmnopqrstu vxyz Semnatura 11 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 abcdefghijklmno

2. Update my file below to contain your up-to-9 signatures. Delete any extra blocks of data in it (so delete whole blocks of data; the blocks of data are 4 rows each)

3. Put your file in a freehosting service (try Google Pages for example, like in the example below):
http://cvolivian.googlepages.com/asig.rss

I’ve put the signature file in Google Pages also. Here’s Google Pages address:
http://pages.google.com/

4. Update Google Settings, click twice on Compose link and you’re ready to go. If errors occur, you might check the length of the signature line and reload the browser. Also pressing more than one time on Compose helps.

(oh, and i’ve done an error, there are 5 lines of text, not 4; whoops)

Here’s the file, below. If you have trouble creating it, any of the links above work fine – just download the file. If you can’t, for some reason, download RSS files, here’s two zip files with the archive (it’s the same file repetead, so only download once):
1. http://www.filebox.ro/download.php?key=0738ecdd49ea1a5de41b63a0bd8887a9 OR
http://tinyurl.com/6r4cb8

2. http://s4.transfer.ro/storage/asig-6107c.zip OR
http://tinyurl.com/553y2k

So, here’s the file you want to create by yourself:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”ISO-8859-1″ ?>
<rss version=”0.91″>

<channel>
<title>Gmail signatures (ignore this)</title>
<link>http://fiieficient.com/</link>
<description>My Gmail sigs</description>
<language>en-us</language>

<item>
<title>PUT IN HERE SIGNATURE #1 OR DELETE THE ENTIRE BLOCK OF TEXT (all 4 lines of text)</title>
<link>http://getaresultnow.com/</link>
<description></description>
</item>

<item>
<title>PUT IN HERE SIGNATURE #2 OR DELETE THE ENTIRE BLOCK OF TEXT (all 4 lines of text)</title>
<link>http://getaresultnow.com/</link>
<description></description>
</item>

<item>
<title>PUT IN HERE SIGNATURE #3 OR DELETE THE ENTIRE BLOCK OF TEXT (all 4 lines of text)</title>
<link>http://getaresultnow.com/</link>
<description></description>
</item>

<item>
<title>PUT IN HERE SIGNATURE #4 OR DELETE THE ENTIRE BLOCK OF TEXT (all 4 lines of text)</title>
<link>http://getaresultnow.com/</link>
<description></description>
</item>

<item>
<title>PUT IN HERE SIGNATURE #5 OR DELETE THE ENTIRE BLOCK OF TEXT (all 4 lines of text)</title>
<link>http://getaresultnow.com/</link>
<description></description>
</item>

<item>
<title>PUT IN HERE SIGNATURE #6 OR DELETE THE ENTIRE BLOCK OF TEXT (all 4 lines of text)</title>
<link>http://getaresultnow.com/</link>
<description></description>
</item>

<item>
<title>PUT IN HERE SIGNATURE #7 OR DELETE THE ENTIRE BLOCK OF TEXT (all 4 lines of text)</title>
<link>http://getaresultnow.com/</link>
<description></description>
</item>

<item>
<title>PUT IN HERE SIGNATURE #8 OR DELETE THE ENTIRE BLOCK OF TEXT (all 4 lines of text)</title>
<link>http://getaresultnow.com/</link>
<description></description>
</item>

<item>
<title>PUT IN HERE SIGNATURE #9 OR DELETE THE ENTIRE BLOCK OF TEXT (all 4 lines of text)</title>
<link>http://getaresultnow.com/</link>
<description></description>
</item>

</channel>
</rss>

<!–Optimal length for a signature (maximum length)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 abcdefghijklmnopqrstu vxyz Semnatura 11 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 abcdefghijklmno

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 abcdefghijklmnopqrstu vxyz Semnatura 11 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 abcdefghijklmno

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 abcdefghijklmnopqrstu vxyz Semnatura 11 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 abcdefghijklmno

–>

What’s in this blog post?
1. Which browsers do people use?
2. What’s my experience with browsers? (why do I write this blog post?)
3. Why use Opera?
4. Why not use only Opera?
5. Why use FireFox?
6. Why not use only FireFox?
7. Why not Internet Explorer?
8. Why not any other browser?
9. Guides for Opera
10. Why no guides for FireFox?
11. Things I’ve ignored
12. Conclusions
13. Go download!

My previous post was on removing the ads from this web site. Now that you’ve done that, it should be nice to see a way in which to visit the web site (which browser to use).

Why is it so important to have a decision on what browser to pick? Well, if you spend 5 minutes a day just with reading emails, perhaps any browser will do. If you spend hours a day on the Internet, speed and comfort is crucial. Picking the right browser is thus very important for those spending lots of time on the Internet.

1. Which browsers do people use?
According to W3Schools web site on browser statistics, Internet Explorer has a combined 54.7 market share for all versions (which is huge), FireFox comes second with 37.2 (average), while Opera has only 1.4 market share. Other browsers have market shares similar to Opera’s or below. I’d looks rather strange for me to say that Internet Explorer can’t really be defined as a serious browser (and you shouldn’t use it) and Opera can sometimes be considered the best browser out there. I’ll explain below. Please note that the W3Schools statistics refer to statistics on its own web site. The site users are generally Internet power users, mostly developers, and other than this web site FireFox has a lower penetration rate. Yet I consider the statistics relevant: it describes how the Internet would look like had it been filled with power users.

2. What’s my experience with browsers? (why do I write this blog post?)
Oh, only for about 10 years, and in the recent years my activities have mostly been based on the Internet.

3. Why use Opera?
1. Opera is fast display of web pages. See the Browser speed comparisons page (old test, but the data are kept up to date with recent versions of the browsers).
2. Opera is a very good browser for going a bit advanced. If FireFox has a add-on for everything, but that add-on must first be installed, Opera has some built-in plugins that make it easier to use (you don’t have to look for plugins, install them, configure them – they’re all in Opera, no tweaking necessary). While FireFox with no add-ons might be an excellent start for a beginner, after a while, when the user gets experienced and needs some extra features, Opera will provide those extra features very nicely (they’re integrated). More time passes and the user gets even more experienced and puts add-ons into FireFox. Of course, even an advanced user will find Opera’s default plugins useful (but unfortunately can’t install user-generated add-ons, since one can only install add-ons created by Opera team, and that is a small number of add-ons). Surely, even a beginner might find Opera’s plugins useful or if they’re to complicated, might decide not to use them. But by default, I consider FireFox with no add-ons to be a browser for complete beginners, Opera for a bit more advanced users, and FireFox with add-ons a browser for power users;
3. Opera is just wonderful in doing a lot of things fast. I can’t think of any other browser that lets me do this very fast: open a page with a lot of links, see a list with all the links in the page (and I can sort this list), open some or all of the links in the page very fast, view the pages, close all the pages except the generating page fast. FireFox has an add-on called Tab Mix Plus (see the install page for Tab Mix Plus on Mozilla web site) which allows you to have a right click menu to open the links from a selected portion of a page in New Tabs. I will ignore the fact that this add-on must first be installed, and the option selected (so it’s not a default feature of FireFox). Unfortunately, FireFox loads pages slower, it closes them slower, and when selecting links it doesn’t have any other options for opening a different set of links (so you can’t easily pick which links to open). See the “Guides for Opera” section below for details on this.
4. Opera is great when not having any tabs opened at all. This might look like a weird way of putting things (why would I use a browser when not having any tabs opened?), but look at it this way: you have a folder with some links you want to open from time to time fast (some no-good RSS forums, some news web sites with pictures and RSS is not good, overall just some pages you want to open rarely and RSS does not work for you or you don’t want to use it). How to open all of the links fast, view them fast, close them all fast? See the Guides section below. This is a wonderful thing on Opera, and it’s one of the main reasons I use it: open pages fast, view them quickly, close them in a snapshot. A lot of pages? Still fast.
5. Opera is the godfather of speed. Keyboard shortcuts, mouse gestures, fast loading everything. Sure, you don’t have all the options of FireFox, but it’s great to do a lot of things very fast. Have a look at Speed Testing the Latest Web Browsers page on lifehacker.com web site to see some speed testing for Opera 9.5 and FireFox 3 beta.

4. Why not use only Opera?
1. If a site is complicated, Opera will look at it and say: Huh? Rich text formatting is with troubles; copy & paste with formatted text – not possible (this is actually an advantage sometimes); some ads in Flash can interfere with web site navigation; Most pages are OK to view in Opera, but when they get tricky, switch the browser
2. (somehow related to 1.) Gmail and Opera don’t mix. OK, you can use it, you have all the functions, but it’s slower, and it’s got no formatting;
3. No add-ons created by users, just the default ones; You can’t have Login with BugMeNot if you want it.

5. Why use FireFox?
1. Compatibility with Internet Explorer from the web sites perspective; It may sound strange to put this as a primary advantage, but if you’re switching from Internet Explorer, you will see FireFox is much better at compatibility than Internet Explorer; Also, web pages are generally designed for Internet Explorer and FireFox; Opera is fine, but those two browsers, having the largest market share, are generally to be accounted for when creating a web page; thus, you are more likely not to have a compatibility problem with a web site when viewing a page in FireFox;
2. Compatibility with Internet Explorer from the users’ perspective; There are a lot of options that are in Internet Explorer and are quite functional in FireFox (most In Opera you get no rich text formatting; In FireFox this is even better than Internet Explorer, and good enough in other cases; If you are expecting a feature in Internet Explorer, you are more likely to find in FireFox than in Opera; You can even get FireFox to look just like Internet Explorer with a some tweaking (see Make Firefox Look Like Internet Explorer page);
3. Even if compatible, the browser is, in my opinion, much better than Internet Explorer; beautiful, wonderful browser; Not as fast as Opera, but almost as compatible with any web site as Internet Explorer, and in most cases more pleasant to use;
4. Good for absolute beginners (you need to install nothing, don’t care about anything in the browser, just make it work), and also for power users (you can even design your own add-on for your own taste, though it is more easy to find one that suits you in the huge list of add-ons);
n. A huge list of small reasons called add-ons; Add-ons are THE feature for FireFox; You can’t like FireFox for one single reason if you have a lot of add-ons; You’ll just love FireFox for more than one reason; There are about 2,000 extensions on the Firefox Add-ons: Browse all Extensions page; You will like some, ignore most; But that’s what makes FireFox special: you can have your own, very special, unique-in-the-whole-world browser; They are that different; If I were to say two common things for these add-ons, these are: they make FireFox better and when having a lot of them they make it run slowly (so that’s a good reason for careful picking them up before installing); Most add-ons also take some time to be configured, so they’re a bit time consuming; It should be noted that you can save the installed add-ons and their settings if you reinstall the operating system (please see the Profile backup page); You just have to move some directories, or restore from a previous back-up;

6. Why not use only FireFox?
1. Hadn’t been for Opera speed, there would be no other reason; it’s just that it’s a bit slowly;
2. There are some web sites that are only for Internet Explorer.

7. Why not Internet Explorer?
To keep things simple, I don’t consider Internet Explorer to be a browser. Sure, you must and you are forced to use it to view some pages that require only Internet Explorer pages (online antivirus scanners for example; some banking web site, for another example) . But generally, you can live without Internet Explorer just fine.

I will not give in reasons for you not to use it, other than “it’s not a browser in my opinion”. I’ve created this blog to show you what you can and should use, not on what you can’t and shouldn’t.

8. Why not any other browser?
I have in my PC right now Apple’s Safari (for Windows) and Netscape Navigator. I’ve worked with Flock and also with some Linux browsers. I personally didn’t consider them to equal FireFox and Opera (even on Linux). I recommend that you use Opera and FireFox for a while and then use other browsers if you wish to compare them. More than one browser is fine for this reason: different logins. You can be logged in different browsers with different accounts on the same email address, for example.

The answer to the question “Why not another browser?” is simple: because you have a better option – FireFox and Opera.

9. Guides for Opera
1. How to open a lot of links in a new page in Opera? The simple solution is: right click a link, and Open in background tab. But that’s so incredibly slowly for more than 10 links. My solution? If you have big a set of links as text format (just a set of links in Notepad, for example), first convert the links from plain text to HTML (self-send an email; create a forum post with the preview page – both of these solutions will convert your text from basic text to clickable links). After you have a natural web page with a list of links in them, go to Tools Links (Ctrl + Alt + L is a handy shortcut for this). Sort your links the way you want them (click on the links columns). Select links using Ctrl (for links that are not a long consecutive list, but just random occurrences), or with Shift (for a consecutive list of links). Right click and “Open in background tabs” or press Ctrl + Shift + Enter. Close the Links window. Now you will have the originating page and a long list of tabs. Navigate through tabs using 1 and 2 keys (or clicking on the tabs). When done, select the originating tab and press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + W (close all but active). Voila! The procedure may look a bit tricky to use, but please remember that I consider it to be the most important feature of Opera browser, and after some use you’ll certainly learn the keystrokes. This procedure is, in my opinion, the number one feature of Opera. Simply irreplaceable;
2. How to open from time to time some links in a folder? First of all, organize your bookmarks: there might be links you will open daily (news), weekly (blogs), or at a different time frame. Organize them via this criteria into folders. Place the folder on the Personal toolbar (you can view this bar on View => Toolbars => Personal bar; to display a folder on the Personal bar, go to Bookmarks => Manage bookmarks => Right click on the folder => Show on personal bar). Now left click on the folder on the Personal bar => Open all folder items. Navigate between tabs with mouse or 1 and 2 keys. When done, hit Ctrl + Alt + W (Close all).

10. Why no guides for FireFox?
FireFox is based on the community. If you have a question on FireFox, it’s probably been answered before in the MozillaZine forum. Go read, go find.

I will tell you some tips & advices, though:
1. The list of extensions on the Mozilla site is huge. How can you find the top extensions? On the Firefox Add-ons: Browse all Extensions page, you can sort extensions by Popularity or by Ratng. Still no good? Use this Google search to find some lists made by Internet users. You can also search for lists on special fields or activities (like developers, sports, movies etc. etc. – you can also search like this in the FireFox Add-ons page);
2. I personally love these extensions: AdBlock Plus (to block ads, in combination with Adblock Filterset.G Updater, which updates the filters for ads), Auto Copy (copies text automatically), BugMeNot (for easy login to popular web sites, so you don’t have to create an account, just use an account already created by a nice human being), ColorfulTabs (just adds color to tabs; did anyone said carnival?), CustomizeGoogle (tweaking Google search; lots and lots of options), Download Statusbar (improved download features), Gmail Manager (able to access multiple Gmail accounts at once), Google Toolbar for FireFox (features by Google), Tab Mix Plus (a lot of add-ons on tabs).

11. Things I’ve ignored
I can’t say anything on security but refer to past results or professional testing. If I claim to know what a secure browser is, you might still get an attack from this browser. If I give you a professional test, your one browser’s fault might be the one that will hurt your PC. To put it simple: no browser is secure. My personal choice for tricky web sites is Opera, because most hackers are likely to attack a more popular browser (also because it can’t deal well with very complex web sites, so it will not be attackable). But instead of focusing on what browser is more secure, you should focus on security to all browsers with an Internet security application (see my blog post removing the ads from this web site for some tests on those applications). You should also use this Google search on security tips as a basic start to know more on Internet browsing security. Navigating safely should a bigger priority for you than for the browser.

I’ve also ignored a lot of features. FireFox has a not-so-bad RSS reader, Opera has a basic torrent file handler. FireFox comes with a separate email application (ThunderBird), while Opera even has a chatting system. Why I ignore these? Because for RSS there are better Internet applications (I like Google Reader), and offline applications (see this list: News Aggregators for Windows). For torrent files there are external applications, most of them being better than Opera’s internal. There are (questionable) better email solutions than Mozilla’s ThunderBird (some even web based, like Gmail), there are better chatting features than Opera. I will not install Opera to chat, I will install it to browse fast. I strongly believe that there is no universal solution for every problem, and that specialized features are best to describe a browser. I just don’t care about the extra features of FireFox and Opera. A browser should, in my opinion, do just this: browse. And do that browsing extremely well.

The last thing I ignored are system resources. I considered it’s more efficient to buy some extra RAM for memory-hungry applications than use just one browser, or be bothered by memory leaks. If you care on system resources, it’s more efficient to buy a better piece of hardware (like RAM or whole PC), than care on what browser requires less resources (or at least that’s what I think).

12. Conclusions
I’ve shown my reasons. My conclusions are simple: use both FireFox and Opera. From time to time use Internet Explorer, when special installs required. If you want to, you can use some lesser popular websites, but it’s best to first test FireFox and Opera. My computer starts with a music software (WinAmp), two browsers (FireFox and Opera), an instant messaging software and a plugin to register what I listen to (Last.fm’s widget). So whenever I start the PC, two browsers pop up. 95% of the time they’re both opened and I used them both. Complementary.

13. Go download!
This is the download link for Opera (I earn no money for this link). After install, you can customize it with skins. Go download.
This is the download link for FireFox (I earn no money for this link). After you install it, it presents you ways to customize it with add-ons and themes.

What’s your thinking on my blog post? Please leave a comment below. It helps my web site’s Google Ranking, it helps my readers, it creates a bond between you and my blog. Leave a comment now.

Why should you block the ads? The answer is simple: they distract you from viewing the interesting content, and even if they are contextual ads (so they are related to the content), most of them are not what you would look for in a page. You might want to keep the ads just to see how other people would promote a web site in two lines. I personally remove ads from FireFox, and keep them in Opera.

Now that you know why should you remove ads, read on to see how to remove them.

What can you read in here?
1. How to remove ads on web sites?
a. Internet security level
b. Browser level
2. How to block the Google ads on this blog?

1. How to remove ads on web sites?
a. Internet security level
Most security solutions like antiviruses now include Internet ad blockers. Which to pick? This is a very broad information for me to analyze, so I will outsource this research. Please see the CNET Top 10 Antispyware apps 2007 page (March 2007), Top Antivirus Software by PC World (January 2006), Anti-Virus Software Review 2008 (2008 data).

I have had pleasant experiences with Kaspersky’s solution for blocking ads, but I haven’t tried anything else than that for blocking ads, so the test presented earlier are a much better data source than my personal test. Go install an antivirus and Internet protector! (not only for ads, but for general security of your PC)

b. Browser level
FireFox has AdBlock Plus (see the AdBlock Plus page on Mozilla web site), and you should also install FilterSet Updater (see FilterSet Updater page on Mozilla web site) to get continuously updated filters for AdBlock Plus (so a recent ad server is also blocked). It also has a manual way of blocking images.

Opera has a manual way of blocking images, and some filters to block the ads can be obtained from: Opera 9 Ad Blocking page and Opera ad block filters page.

In Internet Explorer 7 you can block ads via this tool – IE7PRO.

For any other browser, do a search on Google for “[name and major version of the software] remove ads”. Example: Internet Explorer 6 remove ads. Blocking ads also works for other applications, like Instant Messaging software ads.

2. How to block the Google ads on this blog?
This article explains how to remove ads via the hosts file (Vista users, do a search in the Windows directory for the file): Removing Google Ads Using the Windows Hosts File.

Also, most of the methods described earlier should also work.

Now that you know it, go block the ads!

Do you know a better solution than this to block ads? Do you have a personal experience with blocking ads? Please post your comment below.