The Interwebs: Internet Tips and Tricks

I'm on the internet a lot, almost all the time.
Whether I'm stumbling, blogging, researching, or just downloading, I'm pretty much connected to the world wide web in some way or another. I'm no expert on the topic, but here a few very simple tips to utilizing the way you surf the web.

#1) Use Google Chrome.
Some of you use it, most of you have heard of it, all of you need to get it.
Google chrome is faster, cleaner (in general appearance), a safer for your computer than any other browser out there. And after a short amount of time, when you open google chrome, a list of your top visited sites is compiled. So you're just one click away from hotmail, facebook, stumble, blogger, wherever you usually go.
But my favourite thing about google chrome, and some other browers try to do this, is that your address bar is google. No more wasting precious seconds of your valuable browsing time by going to www.google.com first, that's old news.

Here's a brief visual comparison of some technical stats of chrome vs. other browsers:

http://cdn.clickonf5.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/1503_performance_comparison_of_web_browsers_large.jpg

Another nice thing about chrome is that all of your recent downloads are lined up along the bottom of the window, so no need to hunting to find where the files have saved, which for me always seems to be the weirdest places. It's weird to go through your "resume" folder and find a picture of an underwater marshmallow staring out at you.

Underwater marshmallow

#2) CTRL ALT DEL your history.
So you don't actually use that command, but you should still be clearing out your history regularly. And not just so that your girlfriend doesn't find your recent redtube views. Your regular internet browsing can start to load up a cache of cookies, temporary files, and stored graphics. Clearing all of this will help your browser run more efficiently, and these little things can add up to some used space on your hard drive. If your like me, there's a lot more important stuff you need to save on your computer than the last person's facebook page you creeped.

3#) Organize your bookmarks.
This one depends how often you're on the web, and what you use it for, but creating folders in your bookmarks can be insanely helpful. I used to bookmark here and there, but soon I realized I had 50 bookmarks, and no idea what they were for. So I sorted them out. I have a few basic folders that I'm constantly adding to, 'books' 'movies' 'misc' 'wish list' etc. But this can also help a great deal if your researching for anything. Make a folder for your project, ex; 'why ginger kids cry' and start your browsing. Every page you use, bookmark it. You never know when your going to need to go back to that information. This really really comes in handy when you need to write a bibliography for an assignment too.

#4) Youtube to Mp3 converter.
Do you lurrrrrve free music? Were you sad when Limewire shut down? Have you been looking for an efficient way to get your tunes? Well here you are!

http://www.youtube-mp3.org/

This website is easy to use, and handy as fuck. Just go to youtube, look up the song you want, and copy&paste the url (video address in your address bar, just in case you're over 45) of the video into the bar. And shazam! You have your very own mp3 of the song that you want. No money? No problem! And this is where google chrome is nice, because all the songs you just downloaded are now lined up nicely on the bottom of your browser.

#5) Peer Boosting
If you ever download movies, music, or anything else that's perfectly legal* off U-torrent Bit-torrent or any sort of torrenting website you know some downloads can be a bit lacking in the seeders section. There's a way you can help pick up the speed of your downloads. All you have to do is right click your download in the torrenting program, and open it's properties. A list of website url's should be in a box called "trackers". Now copy and paste this list under all those other sites, and voila! You have created a lot more resources for your download. Make sure there's an empty line between each site.

http://tracker.publicbt.com/announce

http://tracker.openbittorrent.com/announce

http://tracker.ilibr.org:6969/announce

udp://tracker.publicbt.com:80/announce

udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:80/announce

udp://tracker.ilibr.org:6969/announce

http://nemesis.1337x.org/announce

http://genesis.1337x.org:1337/announce

http://exodus.1337x.org/announce

http://fr33dom.h33t.com:3310/announce

http://www.h33t.com:3310/announce

http://denis.stalker.h3q.com:6969/announce

http://tracker.torrent.to:2710/announce

http://bt.rghost.net/announce

http://pow7.com:80/announce

http://tracker.ex.ua:80/announce

http://tracker.torrentbay.to:6969/announce

http://bt1.the9.com:6969/announce

http://bt6.the9.com:6969/announce

http://linuxoid.in:4443/announce

http://tracker.torrentbox.com:2710/announce

http://mixfiend.com:6969/announce

http://sombarato.org:6969/announce

http://dl.viewcave.com:4425/announce

http://tracker.hdbbt.com:6969/announce

http://3dfreedom.ru:6969/announce

http://bt.rutor.org:2710/announce

http://opensharing.org:2710/announce

http://umunu.com:1984/announce

Like I said, I'm no expert, but these are the things that I find really useful in my virtual surfing. Cheers!
-Foxx

*Not even legal in the least.