#11: Bookmark Star

The Bookmark Star in Firefox, allows you to quickly bookmark, sort, organize, and tag websites which you want to be bookmarked. Visit any website which you would like to bookmark, and press the White star on the right side of the Awesome Bar:

It should turn into this:


The Gold Star means that this web page is already bookmarked, and by default it places it in the Unsorted Bookmarks Folder. If you click the Gold Star again, this little menu pops up:


From here, you can quickly remove the bookmark, name the bookmark, sort this bookmark in folders, add it to your Bookmarks Toolbar, or add tags to this bookmark.

Most of them are self explanatory, and adding tags allows you to easily find websites later. If you sort a website under the tag "recipes", if you typed recipes into the Awesome Bar, your bookmark would appear as one of the websites to choose from. This allows you to easily sort through hundreds of bookmarks to find what you are looking for.

While on the topic of bookmarks, in order to sort bookmarks manually, you may press Bookmarks ok the main bar, and then press Organize Bookmarks. This will bring you to the Library where you can sort all your bookmarks into folders, add folders, change names, add tags, etc.

#10: RSS Feeds

RSS Feeds allow users to quickly get access to the newest articles/posts from certain websites. Next time you visit one of your favorite websites, look at the Awesome Bar (this is the name the Firefox developers call the box where you type in websites), and at the right side of that box, you will most likely notice the RSS Symbol. If you click on this, it will bring you to a website where you can subscribe to an RSS Feed (Push the Subscribe button).

After subscribing to an RSS Feed, it will by default install to your Bookmarks Toolbar. From there, you can drag it around to place it where you want (I like to place my RSS Feeds on the left side of the toolbar, while having my normal bookmarks towards the right). Now, if you click on the RSS Feed on the toolbar, you will see the titles of all of the newest articles/posts/videos, and if you click on one, it will automatically open a window to that page (I would recommend a Middle Click in order to quickly open in a new tab).

This allows you to get access to your favorite websites, without ever having to sit on the website refreshing every two seconds waiting for new things to happen. Every so often just click on the RSS Feed and see if anything catches your attention, if not, spend time elsewhere until something does reel you in.

#9: My Favorite Firefox Add-ons

For those of you who have never heard of Add-ons, they are little additions to Firefox to make your browsing experience better. This is a list of the top Add-ons which I personally use, and highly recommend to everyone. These can either be installed by looking through Firefox's own built in Add-on browser, or by going to Firefox's website, and clicking on the Add-ons tab.

Adblock Plus (Link) is an Add-on for firefox which blocks all ads. This allows your bandwidth to be used much more wisely, and not be wasted on advertisements. The Internet itself gets a much cleaner look as well. After installing Adblock Plus, you will have to restart Firefox. After restarting you will be greeted with a screen to choose which blocklists you want to use, just choose the one which covers your country (most likely the EasyList (USA) blocklist). After choosing your blocklist, say goodbye to ads forever.

QuickRestart (Link) is an Add-on which allows you to restart Firefox very easily. After installing this Add-on, you can restart Firefox by either pressing Ctrl+Alt+R, or you can add a little button to your toolbar in order to restart at the push of a little button. If you right click the Main Bar (the bar which says File - Edit - View - History...), you can choose Customize. After choosing customize, you will be able to drag around different items, add buttons, move toolbars, and customize Firefox to better suit your style. If you scroll down the window that opens up, you should see a QuickRestart button. Click and drag the button to wherever you want, and place it there (I recommend placing it right next to Help for very easy access).

Video DownloadHelper (Link) is an Add-on which allows you to download multimedia files from many streaming websites. After installation, an easy to use button is added to your navigation toolbar which lights up any time there is downloadable content. You can then choose which file you want to download from the dropdown menu, click it, and begin your download. On the site that is called Youtube, which many of you probably frequent, it will add an even more convenient button right next to the video, which will allow even quicker access to downloading the streaming content.

Stylish (Link) is an Add-on which allows you to change the look of websites, according to these styles which you download from Stylish's website, www.userstyles.org. Once you read their website, you can look through all the different Stylishes users have created, and choose which ones you want. My favorite Stylish by far is Darkoogle, which makes Google look like this:

Enough has been said.

Hope you all enjoy these three Add-ons as much as I do, and don't forget to go look at Firefox's website for your own Add-ons, there are plenty to choose from.

#8: Upgrading to Open Office 3 on Ubuntu 8.10

Ubuntu 8.10 shipped with Open Office 2.4. Since then, version 3.0.1 has come out, which brings about many advantages over 2.4.

First, we will need to update the repositories. Be very sure that you do not add repositories from untrustworthy sources.

Repositories are servers where Ubuntu will check for updates for all of the programs installed on your computer. This article will explain how to add the Open Office repository to Ubuntu using the GUI, because I think it is easiest.

Go into System -> Administrator -> Software Sources. This will open up this window:



Then click on the "Third-Party Software" tab, and click the Add button in the bottom left corner. It will ask you to Enter the Complete APT Line of the repository, enter in this line:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main

Then click add source, and make sure that the box is checked. After clicking Close it will probably tell you your things are out of date, so go into System -> Administration -> Update Manager, and it will update everything for you. The Open Office 3.0.1 (or whatever the newest version is at the time) should be downloadable now. These will automatically be checked along with all the other programs, and will automatically be updated along with the rest.

#7: Using OpenDNS

I would recommend OpenDNS to everyone, whether you are on Linux, Windows, or Mac.

A DNS Server is a server which holds an incredible amount of websites, and converts website names (which are easy to remember for humans), into IP Addresses.

When you type "linuxforthelayman.blogspot.com" into the browser, the computer will contact the DNS server to get the IP Address of the server holding the website, and once your computer gets the IP Address of the server which contains the website, it begins the connection to that IP to begin download the information.

DNS servers are usually automatically assigned to you through your ISP (Internet Service Provider), but you can manually override them with your own DNS servers (OpenDNS is one of the best DNS servers around). If you sign up for a free account on their website, you could also do a lot more like blocking certain websites either manually, or using their lists (which are updated all the time). For the full list of categories they block, check out their website (Link).

In order to change which DNS server being used in Ubuntu, you will have to right click the NetworkManager Applet which is in the upper right, and click on "Edit Connections." Then click on the tab Wired or Wireless depending on which you are on, and click on your connection and push Edit:



After this Edit is pushed you should see a screen like this:



Click on "IPv4 Settings," switch Method to Automatic (DHCP) Addresses Only, and type in 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220 into the DNS Servers box. The two IP Addresses seperated by a comma are the addresses to the OpenDNS servers. After you have finished, click OK, and then test to see if you have OpenDNS by going to the test page (http://www.opendns.com/welcome/oops/)

#6: Ubuntu 9.04 - Jaunty Jackalope

The new version of Ubuntu is going to be released on April 23rd, and is codenamed Jaunty Jackalope. There are a nice amount of new features, but many small upgrades here and there.

There will be a new login screen and a new background awaiting you once you make the upgrade to 9.04. The login screen is black with a 3D Ubuntu logo in the bottom right, and I must say it looks great. The new background is the typical brown theme of Ubuntu, a mix of light brown and dark brown streaks:



Three of the big additions to this version will be the upgrade of GNOME, a new notification applet, and the support for ext4 filesystem.

GNOME is the basic desktop environment that Ubuntu is built upon, and will be upgraded from version 2.24 to 2.26. This will allow better support for those who have multiple monitors, and is also officially implementing Brasero in the list of included apps (If you read my earlier article here, you should have installed Brasero already, it is a great burning program).

The new notification applet doesn't seem like much now. A few programs are using it so far, Pidgin is the only one that I noticed, but more will implement it further down the line. Here is a demo from Mark Shuttleworth's website to show it working (Link).

A filesystem is the way files are stored on the hard drive, and the ext3 filesystem is the one which is used in most linux distributions (including Ubuntu 9.04). Ext4 will be the next generation of the ext filesystem, the largest update being variable size blocks. This will lead to a great improvement of performance with very large files. While Ubuntu 9.04 will still be using ext3 by default, once the bugs are ironed out in ext4, and feedback is given to Canonical, ext4 will probably be the default in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala).

#5: Installing an IP Blocker

Every computer connected to the internet has a certain address, which is usually in the format xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, and is called an IP Address. An IP blocker is a program which can stop you from connecting to certain IP Addresses. There are lists compiled by people all over the world to block known addresses which are bad. There are many different lists on the internet, ranging from blocking whole countries, to blocking known adware and spyware IPs.

There is also a list called bogon, which has lists of IP addresses which have not been assigned by the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority). IP addresses belonging to the bogon group are usually forged or corrupted, so they are generally not too safe.

For Windows, the biggest IP Blocker is called Peer Guardian 2 (would highly recommend to install it if you are using Windows), but for Ubuntu, I use a program called iplist.

The easiest way to install this program is to use the Synaptic Package Manager (System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager), and search for a program called iplist.

After Ubuntu is done installing that package, and any others that are needed, the program should be available under Applications -> Internet -> IPBlock. Upon entering the program you will be asked for your password, this is just used to give permissions to the program to do what it needs to do.



After the program opens, you should click on the Lists tab. Those are the basic IP lists which should block most of the bad IPs, and bogon is optional. If you click the Add URL button, you will be able to choose from an assortment of different lists, which you can choose to your liking. You could block all government IPs, all edu IPs, certain countries, etc.

The Network tab will allow you to block more protocols, block certain ports, or ignore certain ports, and I would leave those exactly how they are unless you know what you are doing.