First things first.

What’s Defragmenting?

Defragmenting is the process of reducing the fragmentation of files in your hard disk. Wait what? The thing is as you go on storing files in your computer, the OS allocates continuous memory wherever possible. If not then the files are divided (or more appropriately fragmented) and placed in different memory locations. This increases the access time for the files and slows down your PC.

To get a clearer idea, just follow the image to the right. (Image Credit: Wikipedia)

Also read: Defraggler- Piecing Together the Puzzle of your Hard Drive

So MyDefrag. Here are some of its features:

• Very Simple
• Very Fast. (gotta say it again and again!)
• Has many options, from quick defrag to full defrag.
• Optimizes your disk as well

You have different options for data and system disks, for defragmenting only or defragment and optimize and even for normal disks and flash disks (although I’d not vouch too much for that!)

I know no ones going to do it daily or even weekly or for that matter monthly! But it is recommended that you at least defragment your disk every once in 6 months. And this is the perfect tool, in my opinion.

The only con that I have found is that, it hasn’t been updated or given any new features. But hey they say ‘don’t repair, what ain’t broken!’

Also The default installer comes with a set of easy to use scripts for end-users, a scripting engine for demanding users, a screensaver, and a combined Windows plus command line version. A little too much.

Just try it out and let me know your comments.

Download : MyDefrag v4.3.1

There are hundreds of keyboard commands to learn, most of them being Windows commands that allow you to navigate and control your computer and certain programs.  Google, however, also has its own list of keyboard commands that allow you to browse through your Gmail without ever taking your fingers away from the keys.

I started using Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts when they were first released from the Google labs, and now I hardly ever use my mouse.  What follows is a brief guide to turning on keyboard shortcuts in Gmail, and how to use them once you’ve turned them on.

First, you have to enable the keyboard shortcuts feature in Gmail.  To do that:

1. Click the icon in the top right corner of the screen in Gmail (it looks like a gear), and click “Mail Settings”
2. In the “General” settings tab, look for “keyboard shortcuts” and then click the bubble that says “enable”
3. Start browsing your Gmail with shortcuts!  It’s really that easy!!!

At this point, you’re probably wondering, though: Great, I have the shortcuts enabled; but how do I use them?

That’s a great question, and one that I can only partially answer.  Google provides a complete list of all keyboard shortcuts, which I will reproduce in an abbreviated list here, but just knowing the shortcuts is only the start.  It will be slow going at first, primarily because most people aren’t used to shortcut browsing, least of all in their e-mail clients. Here are the basic commands you’ll probably want to start with, just to familiarize yourself with the concept.  Again, it won’t come overnight, but if you take a few shortcuts at a time and commit them to memory (also making sure to use them occasionally) you’ll have it down in no time.

These are the basic key commands in Gmail (compliments of the Gmail team).  There are many others, which you can research at the above link.  Again, don’t be disheartened because you don’t know them all or because it isn’t second nature to you.  It will take time to learn these keyboard shortcuts, but once you do, you’ll be a member of that special club, and will be able to amaze all your friends with your secret handshake.

Author Bio:
Mariana Ashley is a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online colleges. She loves receiving reader feedback, which can be directed to mariana.ashley031 @gmail.com.

Actually the method is quite simple. If your theme includes a direct jQuery call from the header.php (usually will be written like

<script type=’text/javascript’ src=’http://domain-name.tld/wp-includes/js/jqueryjquery.min.js?ver=2.9.2′></script>

or something similar) just delete the line.

If your theme designer had adopted efficient programming practices, he would have used the wp_enqueue_script() function. It can be identified by going to your Theme Functions (functions.php) file of your theme.

Now to include the script from Google`s Ajax Libraries API servers, just insert the following code into the Theme Functions (functions.php) file of your theme:

// smart jquery inclusion
if (!is_admin()) {
wp_deregister_script(‘jquery’);
wp_register_script(‘jquery’, (“http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js”), false);
wp_enqueue_script(‘jquery’);
}

Once done, save the file and your done. To check if the change has occurred, load your blog’s home page (or any other page for that matter). Now press Ctrl+Shift+R to force refresh the page.

Now take a look at the page source (Ctrl+U or View => Source). If the following line appears, you have successfully included this hack into your wordpress blog:

<script type=’text/javascript’ src=’http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js?ver=2.9.2′></script>

The advantage of this hack is that your page loading times will get faster and in lieu better!

Well there are two ways here. One is the software way and the other is the command prompt way. Yeah cmd does look a little intimidating but just here me out. Once you complete the following steps, you’ll see how easy it really is.

1. So first you’ll have to go to Start => Run or Start+R.
2. Now just type the following
   

   shutdown.exe -s -t 20

Thats it! But don’t press OK or Enter yet. There’s some explanation to be done with.

So the command that you’ve entered here is shutdown.exe -s -t 20. Lets break it down now.

• shutdown.exe : Quite self explanatory. The program which shut’s down your computer.
• -s : Called as an argument, it says to shutdown the computer. Similarly if you would replace it with -r, the computer would have restarted -l would have logged of the computer.
• -t : Again an argument. It functions as a timer. The number succeeding it is the number of seconds the computer must wait before shutting down. So 20 here says the computer to shut-down after 20 seconds.

You could change the time. Suppose you want the computer to shutdown after 15 minutes, just enter the period in seconds. 15×60 = 900.

Animation showing the computer shutdown process.

Trick: Although this is not needed, this step can add a cool message to your shutdown window. Just add a -c “comment” to the earlier command. You can replace comment with anything you like. eg:

shutdown.exe -s -t 900 -c “This shutdown has been inititaed bby Richie – the greatest hacker!”

You’ll get a cool message like this:

Shutdown with Comment

You could use the following table for your reference as to which arguments to use:

The tests in the video shows that Opera Mini could render  upto 5 pages, on a 2G Edge network, in the time the phone’s default browser renders 1 page! In other word nearly 5 times faster surfing.

If you aren’t an iPhone user, there’s a pretty good chance that your phone-specific Opera Mini has been released. You can download it from here.

Memory Fox is a new add-on for firefox that considerably reduces Firefox’s memory usage. You can check out the below screen-shots taken by me.

Indeed its, good. Nearly 33 MB or 13 % of RAM recovered! Memory Fox primarily operates by flushing for memory recovery. As the developer stats:

“Memory Fox”, focuses on two ( 2 ) types of memory usage and with flushing for memory recovery. When resource requirements ( Stack and Heap ) have been reached, according to the user’s preset option settings, the memory will be flushed and recovered from Fragmented Orphaned ram memories.

You can read more about the add-on from here. The add-on is available for download at the Add-ons for Firefox site, here.

Once installed you can activate the add-on by going to Tools => Memory Fox => Activate Memory Fox or alternatively use the short cut Alt+A. Note that this add-on is still experimental and user discretion is advised.

First Image Credits: Orcon.net.nz. Technorati short code 7VFEZM729PBK.

1. Use a limited number of plugins. (recommended is not more that 20)
2. Reduce the number of php calls your template makes. Refer this article for some quick changes
3. Serve your images from a sub-domain on your server. Refer this article to achieve this step.
4. Use a limited number of images in your template.
5. Optimize images the right way. Heres a good article from techpavan.
6. Use a caching plugin like Hyper Cache, Super Cache or W3 total cache.
7. Insert javascripts (like that of statistics) from your footer.php.
8. Compress your style-sheet. Use this CSS compressor.
9. Use the Closure Compiler to compress your javascripts.
10. Enable caching and GZipping from your .htacess. Refer to this article for other .htacess hacks along with the above mentioned ones.

Hmm. Definitely a checklist to be followed. Leaving the 5th point the rest are only one-time hacks. Just do it once and enjoy its benefits forever! Got some more tips? Share them.