Everyone inevitably goes through a season in their life where they have to take a step back and reassess certain assumptions about life… for me, it was the feasibility of being an adsense-funded blogger. Back in Feb this tiny site hit a record 83GB of downloading traffic, then came the Google bolt.

This is for those of you who have yet to see what an adsense check (or dishonoured one) looks like. The photo is worth S$193, a piffling sum for some bloggers, but you might as well get the benefit of the experience in case you have to see it one day: TOS have and will remain one of the bigger mysteries in blogging life (still, thanks Goog for the continued use of picasa and search, I’ll remain your loyal fan).

A blog conversion experience

For now I’m dedicating this music and tech blog and the website back to God, as in directing traffic to worldvision and other frontline communities that need the traffic and donors, ie. any other values other than converting traffic to cash - will that mean less spam? I don’t know. I hope so! But then again there isn’t any bot-saving software I know of.

World Vision is a Christian relief, development and advocacy organisation dedicated to working with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice. www.helpsurvivors.org.

There’s a song I wrote recently, titled ‘One Life’ - can’t wait to find some space to produce it, but it goes like this:

turn the lights this way / i hear a little voice from over here you say / something in your eyes tells me that I can / something in your words says you understand / something in the way you lend your hand// more than just the way / it’s a friend that makes this journey stay / what it is / the meaning of it all /// one life to live / something’s gotta give / you can see a world through broken jigsaw pieces / falling into place / one life to live / someone’s gotta give / children of destiny, faces in the dark / searching for the day / searching for the day /// the learning never ends / though I’ve turned the bend the wonder never can / you lift me from my knees help to make me stand / stepping by my side walking with my hand / when you believe what I could be // through the sands of time / it’s your candle that’s been lighting mine / brighter than / when we shine alone /// one life to live / something’s gotta give / you can see a world through broken jigsaw pieces / falling into place / one life to live / someone’s gotta give / children of destiny, faces in the dark / searching for the day / searching for the day / one day / one life to live

Guess YPN, Nuffnang, Advertlets, Clicksor, everyone, you’ll have to wait your turn.

#4 - Backward Surfing

Recall times when you’re casually surfing and seem to be passing by too many ‘excellent’ sites? It can feel like travelling on a tour bus where there’s too much to see and no time to explore. Often, you move past a good site without favouriting or bookmarking anything simply because:

1. You’re not able to tell from a cursory look whether the page or site is worth flagging compared to what you might encounter in a few moments.

2. You’ve been hopping through many sites in a ‘linear’ fashion (i.e. following a trail of links) and so it’s hard to compare the current and previous sites.

3. You much rather finish identifying all the dozens of ‘good’ links first before going back for a second round of deeper exploration.

In essence, backward surfing works for the many situations when you’re tempted to start clicking Backspace, the browser Back button or surf the history bar because you think you’ve missed something. So here’s the tip: don’t break your surfing momentum; simply “save” your current status by duplicating your current tab or window. In the original window, you can start backward surfing to all the ’stops’ on the journey you would have in retrospect wanted to make. At each of these ’stops’, duplicate the window again before continuing backwards. 

At the end, or rather the beginning, you should now have all your interesting sites open in separate tabs without needing to use bookmarking. This means that when you finally do bookmark sites, they would really represent the best of your surfing efforts.

Browsers:

• Internet Explorer 7.0: Alt+Enter while in address bar (duplicate window)
• Mozilla Firefox: Alt+Enter while in address bar (duplicate window)
• Opera: Shift+Enter while in address bar, Hold Right+Down-Up mouse gesture (duplicate window)

Speed Value: +120%

Rating: 4 Stars

Tips: Intro  #1  #2  #3  #4         Exit (ipodmusic)

#3 - Mouse Gestures

This lesser known but distinctive innovation of Opera’s is really worth featuring at no.3. If you have been practising the first two tips, you’ll realise it demands the use of both hands. Now that’s ok for most situations except when, like me, you sometimes want to relax and surf with mouse in one hand and cup of coffee in the other!

Link Gestures

  Open link in a new window in the foreground

1. Point to link
2. Hold down right button
3. Gesture down
4. Release

  Open link in a new window in the background 

1. Point to link
2. Hold down right button
3. Gesture down-up 
4. Release

Gestures take some retraining of surfing habits as we’re programmed to automatically head to the browser toolbar or use a keyboard shortcut. However the investment does pay off handsomely. For example, instead of having to repeatedly navigate your mouse precisely over the ‘close tab’ button on the tab corner, just gesture an ‘L’ while holding down the right mouse button from anywhere on the screen. And if you have dozens of tabs opened from using speedsurfing tips 1 and 2, you’ll find closing and scrolling through them a stroll in the park.

Again as mentioned, Opera is not for everyone. It’s a techie’s dream browser though still worth knowing about as I suspect IE and FF are dying to rip it off.

Browsers:

• Internet Explorer 7.0: Click Wheel+Move Mouse (panning)
• Mozilla Firefox: Click Wheel+Move Mouse (panning)
• Opera: Hold Right+Click Left (back), Hold Left+Click Right (forward), Hold Right+Roll Wheel (jump tabs), Hold Right+DownRight (close), Hold Right+DownUp (duplicate). See Full List

Speed Value: +180%

Rating: 5 Stars

Tips: Intro  #1  #2  #3  #4         Exit (ipodmusic)

#2 - Ctrl+Click or Ctrl+Enter

This opens up a new window behind the exisiting window (and in IE7, FF and OP, opening a new tab behind the window). If you liked Shift+Click, you will definitely love Ctrl+Click. The full power of this function is revealed when you want to browse a full listing of, for example, the first twenty returns on Google.

Do a Ctrl+Click on all the twenty by holding down the Ctrl button and clicking in rapid succession down the list. You’ll see them opening up behind the current tab (i.e. located in the same window). This saves time waiting for pages to load only after you click them. With all the links open, you can then browse swiftly across the tabs, closing those you don’t want.

Enter something into the Google custom search engine on the left and then blitz away! (you’ll remain on this page)

If you happen to be using IE6 and below, you will need to upgrade or switch browsers to try this out. Between IE7 and Firefox2, I’d recommend the latter as it’s generally faster and more secure but try both out and see.

Browsers:

• Internet Explorer 7.0: Ctrl+Click (new rear tab)
• Mozilla Firefox: Ctrl+Click (new rear tab)
• Opera: Ctrl+Shift+Click (new rear tab)

Speed Value: +700%

Rating: 5 Stars

Tips: Intro  #1  #2  #3  #4         Exit (ipodmusic)

#1 - Shift+Click or Shift+Enter

Activating this on a hyperlink opens the link in a new window. When you’re doing a keyword search in Google or happen to be on a site that contain lots of useful links, use this function to browse the second level of links. By keeping the first page of links open you preserve your focus in surfing deeper and can just close the window when you’re done.

You also save tremendous amounts of time not having to navigate backwards using your back button thereby cutting out all the unnecessary reloading of pages. Nothing can be more frustrating than trying to decide whether to follow a new lead or return to a previous point to scan the other promising ones. Using this function, you don’t have to decide at once. Try it out and see how much faster you’re moving! Browsing through an entire Google list becomes virtually effortless.

Now if you’re running a tabbed browser (IE7 only, FF, Opera) you can try a variation of this with Ctrl+Shift+Click or Ctrl+Shift+Enter. This opens a new tab in front of the previous page instead of a new window. I personally love Opera for leading innovation on many aspects of browser functionality - it’s quite the browser for techies.

Browsers:

• Internet Explorer 7.0: Shift+Click (new window), Ctrl+Shift+Click (new tab)
• Mozilla Firefox: Shift+Click (new window), Ctrl+Shift+Click (new tab)
• Opera: Shift+Click (new window), Alt+Click (new tab)

Speed Value: +500%

Rating: 5 Stars

Tips: Intro  #1  #2  #3  #4         Exit (ipodmusic)

In an age of information glut and overload, it’s become something of a lifeskill to be able to navigate and filter quickly through lots of sites so that you get the best value for time. If you’ve never really updated your surfing and searching skills since the last century, it’s time to catch up!

Search technologies and facilities have definitely evolved and many of these innovations may not come to us ‘naturally’ unless we are specifically looking for them. In this series I will be covering ten key tips for speeding up surfing, and another ten for searching. So what’s the difference? Stay tuned and find out!

(We will be discussing features from 3 browsers: IE - Internet Explorer, FF - Mozilla Firefox, OP - Opera)

Tips: Intro  #1  #2  #3  #4         Exit (ipodmusic)