The web hosting solution he picked for me was IPSERVERONE, and I’m still here them.

What can I say? In my first year with them, I didn’t communicate with them at all, but it’s because I didn’t have anything to complain about. The speed and reliability is good. When my friend transfered the account to me, the transfer and renewal was quick and painless. 

IPSERVERONE has solutions for any type of hosting people need these days. The average blogger like myself would look into Web Hosting , but they also offer Reseller Hosting, Co-location, Dedicated Server, Virtual Private Server and Domain names.

I also liked it that it’s a local hosting company. My previous experience was with a US-based company, and although there are certain advantages to that, a Malaysian company is more likely to accept payment straight from your Maybank2U account.

Another important point? Their website is easy to navigate and relatively dummy proof.

If you’re looking for a good local company and entered “malaysia web hosting” into Google, don’t be too surprised if this company pops up - IPSERVERONE. After all, I can only recommend what I know.

See the original entry and leave a comment at:

IPSERVERONE IS ALL CAPS

It works out pretty well for me. There’s so many things to look at on the Internet, and I have the attention span of a fruit fly and the memory of a goldfish. Bookmarks get ignored and I never liked cluttering up my blog with links, but Bloglines get read. So if you’re one of those people who don’t give your readers the option of an RSS feed, I’m not reading you because I forget you’re there right after I surf off.

My biggest problem with Bloglines is that I have way too many feeds. Over the weekend, I’ve been actively weeding out feeds that I’m no longer interested in or I’ve been regularly skipping. Out goes the folder of tattoo and body modification blogs, which I followed religiously until the abrupt stop at some point that I can’t remember any more. My current religion is GTD, productivity and green blogs.

203 feeds is still a lot and take up a lot of room even though I organised them into folders. (The folder system is another thing I need to address in the future.)

This is what my Bloglines look like:

Bloglines also upgraded recently but I tend to ignore things like this unless it directly affects my usage. I decided it was time to start poking around to see what new options they added, and found something pretty handy – the option of only showing feeds that have updated. So my left panel went from what you see above… to this:

Suddenly there’s so much room! Which is great because when there’s less clutter, there’s less scrolling around and less subconscious “OMG! So much to read!” stress.

200 feeds is still way too many, but I’m working on that one.

See the original entry and leave a comment at:

Bloglines, rejiggered

It provides secure browsing and can be customised to your preferences. In this post, I’ll be talking about my personal preferences on Firefox.

Themes let you give your Firefox a new look if you don’t like the default skin. Default works fine for me. The only thing I change about that is to opt for small icons and rearrange my toolbars so that I get as much browsing space as possible.

Now what really makes Firefox worth it for me are the add-ons. There are oodles of add-ons and the temptation to try them all out is great. However, too many add-ons will make your Firefox bloated, taking up much memory and slowing down your computer.

The rule of the thumb is to install what you need or think you’ll find useful, and uninstall anything that you don’t use (or find useful) within a week or two. Some people spring-clean more often or less often, but this is up to you and your own degree of anal retentiveness.

Install these first!

All-in-One Sidebar – This installs a sidebar to your browser which houses your downloads, add-ons, bookmarks and more! You get a one-click access to frequently used functions and it’s handy if you hate the clutter of little boxes floating around.

Tab Mix Plus – One of the things that makes Firefox great is the tab feature. TMP gives you more control over the tabs by adding little things like close buttons for individual tabs.

Foxmarks – Foxmarks is a must-have if you run Firefox. It backs up your bookmarks to an online account that you can access on any computer. In the event you lose your bookmarks, you can download it from your Foxmarks account. Set this to synchronise your bookmarks when you shut down your browser.

Firefox Extension Backup Extension – The problem with having so many extensions is that you start taking them for granted… until your browser dies and you have to start over. My problem is not “where do I download them again?” but “what did I have installed anyway?” FEBE backs up your extensions locally (in a folder you select), so assuming your entire computer doesn’t slide into abyss, you still have your extensions handy and ready to reinstall.

Mail Management

My email is fully online, so I’m spared the pain of losing years of archived mail in a HD crash. Anyway, an archive takes up room. Why waste all that space when free services like Gmail and Yahoo! Mail offers you tons of space?

If you’re a Gmail user, Better Gmail is all you need to pimp your email. It’s a Firefox extension which combines various useful Greasemonkey scripts. Put together by Gina Trapani of Lifehacker, Better Gmail features saved searches, attachment icons, label colors, keyboard macros, a filter assistant and right-click conversation previews. There’s even a couple of skins if you want to change how Gmail looks!

Gmail Manager is another handy add-on. It lets you manage multiple Gmail accounts and receive new mail notification.

If you Yahoo, the Yahoo! Mail Notifier alerts you if you get new email. It only supports one account at a time.

The AJAX Yahoo! Mail [Viamatic WebMail++] lets you preview your email (classic Y!M mode) without leaving the In-box. I have to add that this extension has not worked for me for a while, but when I did, I liked the convenience of not having to load up every email if I don’t want to deal with it just yet.

Useful Misc.

Here’s a list of other useful stuff I have installed:

• Adblock Plus – kill most ads!
  
• Auto Copy – copies instantly when you highlight
• Download Statusbar – uses the status bar below to show download progress.
• FaviconizeTab – reduces tabs to the width of the favicon (the little icon in front)
• FireFTP – FTP from your browser
• FlashBlock – Kills all flash by default. Great if you hate auto-start widgets or get startled often in Friendster.
• FoxyTunes – lets you control your audio player from Firefox.
• IE Tab – in case you really need to view it on IE but don’t want to open IE.
• Link Fixer Thing – fixes minor errors in URLs like extra spaces.
• Minimize to Tray – minimises Firefox to tray instead of to taskbar.
• Organize Status Bar – with so add-ons things installed, you might need to rearrange your status bar to your preference!

Related Entries

• Alternatives to popular software

See the original entry and leave a comment at:

Firefoxing the web

I have a newish external HD where I back up all my data and leave unplugged until I need it. This is a precaution I decided to put in place some months ago because Dante is problematic. The other reason is because I want to be able to grab the HD and run in any event I have 2 minutes to evacuate the house. The only things running on the machine itself are applications and copies of files that I need.

I am prepared for the eventuality that my computer will roll over and die any time, but when the moment comes, it hurts anyway.

So Dante’s HD croaked during an attempt to upgrade his RAM a month ago, giving me something to blame if I can’t locate certain files. A new HD was procured, but since everything was wiped, my dad (one of the original computer geeks in town) simply reinstalled Windows XP and left me to figure everything else out.

Shortly before HD death, I was already looking out and replacing certain programs on my computer with something that guzzles less memory. This is a very interesting journey that led to me discovering good alternatives to popular software. I’ll be sharing my favourites in this post.

————————–
Word Processor
As a writer, my top need is a good word processing software. Microsoft Office? Bah. More bling than I’ll ever use. Out of the suite of programs, I only use Word and the most complicated function I need from it is spellcheck.

Ditto on StarOffice and OpenOffice. It’s open source, but I hated both of it because I spent hours fighting over their formatting issues in my last job.

During last year’s Nanowrimo (which I didn’t join), I lurked in the Technology forum to find out what other people are using. Among the programs suggested was RoughDraft.

Designed specially for writers, it contains all the functionalities that I need. In fact, it contains a number of functionalities that I don’t need, but at least it’s not as bloated as MS Word. It saves in .rtf, which means you can still open it in any other word processor, and it’s small enough to install in your thumbdrive so you can bring it with you.

From the website:

RoughDraft is not designed to compete with major commercial word processors and does not provide the following features:

• A full page view for editing (although it does have a full page view for print previewing).
• Indexes and tables of contents.
• Tables.
• Pictures.
• Footnotes.
• A grammar checker (eeurch!)

Part of what makes this a fantastic find for me is that it’s a freeware (formerly donationware), light on system resources, easy to use and works with the free version of an offline dictionary/thesaurus called WordWeb.

Both came in useful at work, where all our computers are not connected to the Internet and we are forced to use WordPad to do our writing. Most are still flipping dictionaries for spelling and definitions! As people who make a living out of spinning words, this is ridiculous!

Half the reporting dept uses RoughDraft and WordWeb now. The feedback I get is positive, especially where the built-in spellcheck is concerned!

As for me, MS Word isn’t going to darken my doorway for as long as something else works just as well. If anyone sends me a .doc, there’s always Word Viewer 2003.

PDF Reader
PDF files are increasingly common on the web these days. Adobe Reader is the default reader of popular choice (or perhaps by marketing), but it takes ages to launch. That pisses me off, especially if the document only contains a few paragraphs or if it’s a really huge file like the Heroes graphic novels.

I found a free PDF reader called Foxit via one of the productivity/tech blogs I follow. Foxit is light and fast, even with huge PDF files. It’s small enough for you not to notice it’s there until you need it. So goodbye Adobe Reader, hellooo Foxit.

Zip Utility
We all heard of WinZip and WinRAR, but I prefer one software that can deal with various compression formats. I gave ALZip gave a try and fell in love with it. Again, it’s free and light. It does everything WinZip and WinRAR can do, and more. ALZip is part of the ALTools set of PC utilities. I haven’t checked the rest out yet, but you might find something useful there.

Audio Software
WinAmp is the default mp3 player most of us have. It also contributed to the slowdown of Dante but I tolerated it because it didn’t occur to me to look for an alternative. I just didn’t think anything could top WinAmp!

But much like MS Word, I only use very basic functions. It was hard to pry me away from WinAmp, but I finally decided to look at other software. I couldn’t decide between Media Monkey and foobar2000 so I installed both and tried them out.

Initially, I didn’t like foobar2000 because it didn’t work smoothly with FoxyTunes. I’ll have to open foobar to get the new song to register in FoxyTunes’s display. This isn’t an issue anymore, and foobar’s so much better when I discovered that they have handy components like a scheduler. I tend to let music run when I’m falling asleep, so it’s nice to get the player to shut off after I sleep and start up again to wake me up.

I liked Media Monkey just fine until something in my operating system bit it and it won’t start anymore.

foobar2000 wins, and you gotta love the fact that it’s probably named after FUBAR.

Instant Messenger
Why yes, I have IM. I don’t advertise this fact because of spammers and strangers. Gone are the days when adding any Tom, Dick and Harry is fun. My IMs are mostly to stay in touch with a handful of long-time net friends.

I’m registered with most major IM services but having a separate client for each stopped being funny. A friend introduced me to Pidgin (then called GAIM), a multi-protocol client. Took me a while to pry myself away from Y!M (I miss the :D emoticon!) but eventually, I warmed up to it. Having all your contacts in one window is handy (and scary). The only draw back is when you have a contact on more than one client; they show up in triplicate when they are online!

The same friend pointed out that you can drag and drop the duplicates on top the one you mainly use to chat with that friend. That contact will then only appear once in the window. Problem solved!

————————–

This post ran a lot longer than I expected, and I’m not done yet! But this are my computer essentials. My HD might be freshly-wiped, but I stuck to these lightweight software to keep my creaky old man of a machine running at optimum level.

If it isn’t already clear, all the alternative software above are freeware, donationware or open-source… because if you’re in Malaysia, you’re usually too poor to afford licensed software. *cough*

In my next post, I’ll tell you what Firefox add-ons I cannot live without.

See the original entry and leave a comment at:

Alternatives to popular software