.: ShaolinTiger - Kung-Fu Geekery :.

I've been using this extension for a long time, since around 0.4, but my Adsense balance was always about $12USD so I didn't really bother about it much.

My Adsense earnings from February 1st 2005 - August 31st 2005 were a massively pitiful $11.05, yeah 7 months Adsense income.

During September, I started learning more about Adsense and tried my hand at it, I'm doing a little better now, so the Adsense Extension comes in even more useful to track my clicks, page impressions and earnings.

A new version just came out and it's a lot better than the previous series, it has a lot of options and even displays the total average you are getting per click.

The latest version added:

Version Notes:

• Added the ability to track referals.
• Added “since last payment” view.
• Added RPC (Revenue per click).
• Added the ability to configure all mouse clicks.
• Added “Update Now” option to mouse clicks.
• Now pull all data from the “overview” page, this allows collecting data for
  all three products from one page, but makes it impossible to group by page or
  ad data as well as losing the “all time” view.

You can find the Adsense Extension Here.

I was surprised this time aswell, Google sent my cheque on January 26th, and I received it on February 4th, wow, some efficiency in the Malaysian postal service..Last time it took about 3 weeks to arrive, and as they said, it took 5 weeks to clear, so 4-6 weeks was accurate.

Well I've been using Firefox 1.5 for quite some time now, so I thought I'd write a little bit about it, and let you know if it's worth upgrading from 1.0.7.

The first thing I noticed was greater memory usage, this may have been due to some of the extensions, but from what I'd read a lot of it was to do with the way Firefox cached images, and didn't release the memory after the tab was closed.

After a day or so of use...my memory useage often looked something like this:

This is indeed quite insane.

That's around 2GB of memory, including what it's used from the page file, obviously something is wrong there.

I did see it improve slightly with an update to the Adblock extension, (d3 nightly 40 had a memory leak).

I've just updated to 1.5.0.1 today, so I'll have to see if that makes it any better as it states in the release notes that it fixes some memory leaks.

I did notice a few minor leaks on 1.0.7, but nothing like this.

I didn't have any problems upgrading from 1.0.7 extension wise, it told me which extensions weren't compatible and helped me check for updates, everything I really wanted was available so that was great. I don't use all that many extensions now, namely:

• Adblock
• IE View
• Tabbrowser Preferences
• DictionarySearch
• BBCode
• Google Pagerank Status
• Download Manager Tweak
• Bugmenot
• Disable Targets for Downloads

One of the first things I noticed about 1.5 was it was considerably faster at opening new tabs, loading new pages and rendering HTML. It was quite an improvement over 1.0.7 (and it should be, with the amount of memory it uses!).

Something that really annoyed me about 1.0.7 was fixed aswell, the fact that when you had a pop-up window (like the comments on a blogger blog) and you opened a new link, it opened in a tab you couldn't click on..you could only access it by using CTRL+TAB. In 1.5 a tab is actually shown, even in a pop-up which is good!

I've also noticed 1.5 does seem to be more stable with less random crashes and disappearing acts.

The update system is a lot more robust on 1.5 aswell, especially for the browser itself, for the 1.0.x series, you had to download the whole 5.8MB installer everytime you wanted to update a minor version..

Now the upgrade is slipstreamed and Firefox automatically downloads a small differential patch that installs itself without having to download the whole installer. It works just fine, I'm writing this via Firefox 1.5.0.1 installed via the new upgrade mechanism.

Other than that there's not a hugely noticeable difference between 1.5 and 1.0.7, I held of upgrading to 1.5 for quite some time to make sure it was ok before I did.

Digg This post.

This is pretty neat, haven't seen anyone mention it so I thought I'd just point it out, charitable guy that I am

It's something like a personalised portal interface, it's actually pretty neat, after you've selected what you want to show, you can drag and drop the boxes around to get the layout just how you want.

It doesn't have that many options at the moment, just the normal ones like BBC, Wired and Slashdot, but it's pretty neat and serves as a nice homepage, especially if you are primarily a gmail user.

You can check it out here: http://www.google.com/ig

Some other resources I use are:

http://www.securitynewsportal.com
http://infosecdaily.net/securitynews/
http://www.digg.com/
http://www.newsnow.co.uk/

Also as a side note, a lot of you are probably still using Firefox 1.0.4, 1.0.5 just came out a few days ago and has been supersceded by 1.0.6 which came out last night (due to some stability issues with the new API implementation.

Why Use Firefox?

“Beware of spyware. If you can, use the Firefox browser.” - USA Today

“Better than Internet Explorer by leaps and bounds.” - FORBES

Popup Blocking
Stop annoying popup ads in their tracks with Firefox's built in popup blocker.

Tabbed Browsing
View more than one web page in a single window with this time saving feature. Open links in the background so that they're ready for viewing when you're ready to read them.

Privacy and Security
Built with your security in mind, Firefox keeps your computer safe from malicious spyware by not loading harmful ActiveX controls. A comprehensive set of privacy tools keep your online activity your business.

Smarter Search
Google Search is built right into the toolbar, and there is a plethora of other search tools including Smart Keywords (type "dict " in the Location bar), and the new Find bar (which finds text as you type without covering up anything).

Live Bookmarks
RSS integration lets you read the latest news headlines and read updates to your favorite sites that are syndicated. (This means you can easily watch blogs for new posts as long as they have RSS/XML/Atom feeds)

Hassle-Free Downloading
Files you download are automatically saved to your Desktop so they're easy to find. Fewer prompts mean files download quicker.

Fits Like a Glove
Simple and intuitive, yet fully featured, Firefox has all the functions you're used to - Bookmarks, History, Full Screen, Text Zooming to make pages with small text easier to read, etc.

S, M, L or XL—It's Your Choice
Firefox is the most customizable browser on the planet. Customize your toolbars to add additional buttons, install new Extensions that add new features, add new Themes to browse with style, and use the adaptive search system to allow you to search an infinite number of engines. Firefox is as big or small as you want.

Setup's a Snap
At only 4.7MB (Windows), Firefox takes just a few minutes to download over a slow connection and seconds over a fast connection. The installer gets you set up quickly, and the new Easy Transition system imports all of your settings - Favorites, passwords and other data from Internet Explorer and other browsers - so you can start surfing right away.

Get funky extensions here: https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/?application=firefox

My favourites would be:

1) Adblock
2) BBCode
3) Bugmenot
4) Dictionary Search
5) Forecastfox
6) LiveHTTPHeaders
7) Wordcount
Download Manager Tweak
9) IE view

And you can read more about WHY you should use it HERE.

Get it now, reclaim the web!

SPREAD FIREFOX - SIGN UP NOW!

Along-side that, Thunderbird 1.0.6 has also been released, I recommend upgrading both to the latest versions.

And as we are on a geek tip, Firefox 1.0.2 has been released with some security updates.

Mozilla has begun rolling the Firefox 1.02 security update. It has appeared with the little fanfare and without the staggered rollout of 1.01 - have Mozilla sorted their distribution worries?

Source: http://it.slashdot.org/it/05/03/23/2330245.shtml?tid=154&tid=172

You can download it HERE

Why Use Firefox?

“Beware of spyware. If you can, use the Firefox browser.” - USA Today

“Better than Internet Explorer by leaps and bounds.” - FORBES

Popup Blocking
Stop annoying popup ads in their tracks with Firefox's built in popup blocker.

Tabbed Browsing
View more than one web page in a single window with this time saving feature. Open links in the background so that they're ready for viewing when you're ready to read them.

Privacy and Security
Built with your security in mind, Firefox keeps your computer safe from malicious spyware by not loading harmful ActiveX controls. A comprehensive set of privacy tools keep your online activity your business.

Smarter Search
Google Search is built right into the toolbar, and there is a plethora of other search tools including Smart Keywords (type "dict " in the Location bar), and the new Find bar (which finds text as you type without covering up anything).

Live Bookmarks
RSS integration lets you read the latest news headlines and read updates to your favorite sites that are syndicated. (This means you can easily watch blogs for new posts as long as they have RSS/XML/Atom feeds)

Hassle-Free Downloading
Files you download are automatically saved to your Desktop so they're easy to find. Fewer prompts mean files download quicker.

Fits Like a Glove
Simple and intuitive, yet fully featured, Firefox has all the functions you're used to - Bookmarks, History, Full Screen, Text Zooming to make pages with small text easier to read, etc.

S, M, L or XL—It's Your Choice
Firefox is the most customizable browser on the planet. Customize your toolbars to add additional buttons, install new Extensions that add new features, add new Themes to browse with style, and use the adaptive search system to allow you to search an infinite number of engines. Firefox is as big or small as you want.

Setup's a Snap
At only 4.7MB (Windows), Firefox takes just a few minutes to download over a slow connection and seconds over a fast connection. The installer gets you set up quickly, and the new Easy Transition system imports all of your settings - Favorites, passwords and other data from Internet Explorer and other browsers - so you can start surfing right away.

Get funky extensions here: https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/?application=firefox

My favourites would be:

1) Adblock
2) BBCode
3) Bugmenot
4) Dictionary Search
5) Forecastfox
6) LiveHTTPHeaders

And you can read more about WHY you should use it HERE.

Get it now, reclaim the web!

SPREAD FIREFOX - SIGN UP NOW!