If you’re one of those people constantly reloading Facebook for notifications and messages to keep up to date, check this out.  MyStatusBar is a Google Chrome extension that displays your Facebook information on the bottom of your screen at all times.

This handy extension will display the famous blue Facebook bar on the bottom of all your web pages.  Easily see your new notifications, friend requests, and new messages all the time.  The bar is very unobtrusive and any Facebook user will instantly recognize the interface it uses.

The extension is very easy to use, the only thing you need to do is be logged in to Facebook.  You’ll be able to toggle through your latest news by using the up and down keys; you don’t even need to directly access Facebook.  You do however have the option to click the news item which will take you directly to its page.

It happens gradually overtime without you even noticing.  Before you know it, you’re hopelessly buried in read and unread mail.  I was in a rather peculiar situation that led to me not using the internet for four whole months.  During this time I received almost 1,000 emails to my inbox.  I found myself hopelessly trying to delete the allotted 50 emails at a time that Gmail allows.  I finally figured out an easier solution: delete all of them at once.

In the search box type “in:inbox is:read” or “in:inbox is:unread” depending on which types of emails you want to delete – read or unread.

It should bring up a list of 20 emails that match that search.  Check the all button.

A yellow dialog box will pop up that says select all emails – even those not displayed in the search results.

That’s it, that should take care of hundreds or even thousands of emails with the click of a button.  You can use this trick for spam, trash, inbox with read or unread mail.  Saved me a lot of time and effort instead of deleting them 50 at a time.

Since its launch Google’s free DNS program has become the biggest provider of DNS in the world.  Getting a total of over 70 billion requests per day, mostly from people outside the United States, Google has now even went on to supply DNS servers to Ipv6 users.  Why do so many people use Google’s DNS servers over their ISPs?

I’ve been using a service called OpenDNS for the last 6 years.  Instead of using the DNS servers that my ISPs provide me with, I opt for the more reliable OpenDNS.  When your computer wants to find the IP address of a domain name, it queries DNS servers.  Usually the default ones your ISP allows you to use are pretty slow.  You may notice when you load a webpage it stays on the “Looking for…<website>” stage for a long time.

OpenDNS allows you to quickly and efficiently look up the IP addresses of websites without the delay your ISP provides.  Google originally entered the market as a test and didn’t mean for their service to catch on.  Eventually Google went on to become the world’s biggest DNS supplier, quickly outnumbering OpenDNS.
How to use Google DNS or OpenDNS

If you wish to use Open DNS, or Google DNS servers, it’s very easy.  Go into your network connections and right click on your network adapter.  Click properties, and select Ip4v from the list and click properties.  On the bottom check the box that says use custom DNS servers.  I suggest entering 8.8.8.8 in the first box and 4.2.2.1 in the second.   The first one is Google and the second one is OpenDNS.  That way if one company goes out you have an equally fast replacement.

Managing a blog with lots of traffic can be a challenge.  Spam, and server load are common problems with many WordPress blogs.  Using the right plugins, you can effectively stop CPU spikes as well as spam.  Setting up proper cache and spam plugins are essential to any large WordPress website.

Wp-supercache is a plugin that displays HTML when someone loads the page instead of querying a database server.  When a fresh user visits a page on your blog it will download the HTML and put it in a cache folder.  The next time someone visits that page it will load from the HTML file and not query the MySql database.  In large traffic spikes a plugin like that can save your blog from overloading the CPU.  In fact, if your blog is going to survive traffic from sites like Reddit or Slashdot, a caching plugin is almost required.
Spam is another huge problem for WordPress blogs.  Spammers comment on blog posts to try and leave their link on your site to promote theirs.  They use bots and post comments on thousands of blogs at a time.  There are a lot of anti-spam plugins out there, but akismet is by far the most efficient.  Akismet will stop WordPress spam before it’s even submitted.  You’re not required to filter out un-needed comments, which greatly reduces time spent approving comments.

I’ve been using Google Chrome over Firefox for a while now.  After starting to use Firefox again I noticed an annoying “feature”.  When you click a tab it sometimes opens a new window.  Apparently if you drag or tear a tab it will automatically open a new Window.  The problem with this is that it happens accidentally very frequently.  It’s a shame that there’s no option to actually correct this issue, but luckily there’s an extension.

Download the extension and restart your browser.  Under the addon options you will see a checkbox to disable the opening a new window.

That’s it, enjoy!

With ISPs giving you less and less privacy in the United States a lot of people are starting to switch to VPNs. Virtual private networks or VPNs allow you to encrypt all traffic between you and their server. You can browse websites or download files without your ISP knowing what you’re doing. All the traffic will be downloaded on their server, encrypted and then sent to you. This allows only you and the company you choose for a VPN to know what you’re doing.

Torrent users especially are starting to migrate to VPNs. Many of these virtual private network services do not log their user’s connections; therefor it’s a pretty secure and anonymous way to browse the internet. However, typically you’re going to have to pay a small fee to use these services.

Tunnelbear allows up to 500 MB of free VPN usage per month. This may not be suitable for heavy bitorrent users, but for those seeking to browse the internet anonymously it is plenty. You can also take advantage of their 1 extra gig of free bandwidth per month by tweeting about their service.

To pay for a subscription is only $5 a month which for a VPN is not that bad. Alternatively you can sign a yearly contract for only $50 which is a little less than $5 a month. The speed of their service isn’t that bad. I used a U.S server and got speeds of 10.1 down and 3.6 mbit up. You have the option of choosing from UK or US servers for optimal speeds.