A lot has happened in that month. Google has added pages to their social networking service Google+, called Google+ Pages, and Ghacks has its own. Feel free to add add the channel to your circle. Check out how to addprofile banners if you want to create a profile banner for your page on Google+ as well.

Google continued with the redesign of core properties such as Youtube and released a new Google header layout.

The company added a Verbatim Search option to Google Search which ensures that results are returned for the user query and not for Google’s interpretation thereof. Check out the userscript Gooverbatim to access Google Verbatim directly.

Not everything was golden in November in regards to Google. The company continued to retire products like Google Buzz, Google Wave and Gears, and started to display advertisement in the Chrome browser.

Mozilla has released the web browser Firefox 8 and the email client Thunderbird 8, and shortly thereafter an update to Firefox 8.0.1 to fix stability issues in the browser.

The company furthermore released the final version of Mozilla Profile Manager, and revealed intentions to speed up Firefox’s update process and memory efficiency.

Microsoft made available the fourth preview of Internet Explorer 10 to Windows 8 users. The company saw the browser’s market share drop to below 50%.

The Redmond company published the biannual Security Intelligence Report that showed a much higher Windows XP infection rate. A leaked (unconfirmed) roadmap revealed Windows 8 and windows 9 release dates

Adobe discontinued Flash for mobile devices and announced that Flash Player 11.2 would include an automatic update feature.

Software, Tutorials and Misc News

A new version of the Lightning Calendar add-on for Thunderbird was released. Look at this guide if you want to sync Google Calendar with Thunderbird Lightning.

Handy browser add-ons and userscripts have been released or updated in November 2011. Among them ScriptNo and Ghost Incognito for the Google Chrome browser. The first is a NoScript port to Google’s browser, the second offers to run specific websites automatically in the browser’s private browsing mode.

Firefox users can make use of Wallflower to block social media buttons on the web to speed up their web surfing and increase their privacy, and of Low Quality Flash to improve Flash media frames per second on low performance systems.

Sky History manager, TeamViewer 7, Game Downloader, BlueStacks, to run Android apps on Windows and the Last.FM, Aupeo & Vkontakte.ru Downloader were some of the popular new releases or updates for Windows in November.

We have published many tutorials and how to articles in November. This included instructions on how to clear the YouTube viewing history, how to remove What’s hot on Google+, how to restore Firefox bookmarks, turn off automatic add-on updates in Firefox and how to disable caps lock permanently.

Did we miss a story or article that you really liked? Please tell us how you like the new best of article format.

Regarding the schedule: Please note that there may be circumstances where I cannot post a review and giveaway on a particular day. This can happen if something unforeseen happens, an accident for instance, or if I do not get a reviewer’s copy of the program in time to review it.

Giveaway Rules

Here are the rules of the giveaway:

• Each day, one software review will be posted. The number of licenses that users can win will be mentioned in the review.
• You can participate in the review by leaving a comment. Sometimes, I may post a question that I’d like you to answer. It would be nice if you’d be doing that.
• You are only allowed to post under one name and email address. Users who post with multiple aliases will be banned from the giveaway. You can comment more than once, but only the first comment will count for the drawing of winners.
• You are free to spread the word and tell others about the giveaway (friends, family). It would really be nice if you could.
• The winners will be mentioned on the Ghack’s Facebook Page and Ghack’s Google Plus page. Both pages can be accessed even by non-members of said social networking sites.
• Winners will be notified by email. Make sure you enter your email address correctly in the comment form. Sometimes I get keys right away and will mail you the keys. Sometimes, companies may require additional information, e.g. your name. In this case, I will mail you and ask for those information.
• I expect winners to respond in five business days. Winners who have not responded in that time will forfeit the license and I will award it to someone else instead.

The applications Day 1 – Day 12:

1. December: Audials Moviebox
2. December: Dropbox (additional storage)
3. December: Game Jackal Pro
4. December: Panda Antivirus Pro 2012
5. December: Fast Picture Viewer
6. December: Alarm++
7. December: Wordweb Pro
8. December: Roboform
9. December: Kaspersky Internet Security 2012
10. December: Drive Scrubber
11. December: Revo Uninstaller Pro
12. December: Sandboxie

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Google yesterday has launched Google+ Pages, an addition to their Google Plus networking service that allows anyone to create pages. This works similar to Facebook Pages. I have created a Ghacks Technology News page on Google+ and would like to ask anyone here on Ghacks to help promote it. You can access the page here.

The page, from the looks of it, looks very much like a standard Google+ profile.

Here is what you need to know about Google+ Pages. I will explain how you can create your own page and what you need to do if you have a website.

You can create a new Google+ page by clicking on the “Create a Google+ page” link in the lower corner of the right sidebar. The link currently is displayed below the Hangout module.

You need to pick a category for your page. Google currently sorts pages into five categories: Local Business or Place, Product or Brand, Company, Institution or Organization, Arts, Entertainment or Sports, and Other.

Depending on the selection made, you need to fill out different kinds of information. Local Businesses for instance need to select their country and primary phone number, products or brands a page name, website, category and visibility.

Once created you are asked to select a profile photo for the page and post about the page on your “user” stream.

Webmasters who create a page for their website business are encouraged by Google to link from their Google+ page to their website and vice versa. While it is relatively easy to link from Google+ to the website, it is not as easy the other way round. Google asks webmasters to use the rel=”publisher” tag when linking from their web property to the Google Plus page. This identifies the user as the publisher and is likely used for verification purposes.

Additional information about this process are available here on the Google Help site.

Only the page creator can post on the page at this point in time. Other users can comment on posts, but there is no option right now to authorize other users to make posts directly on the page. According to Google, this will change in the coming weeks.

I have a few ideas for the Ghacks page which I would like to briefly describe.

• Post stories that are interesting but do not fit on Ghacks.
• Tech Help for users. This is somewhat limited right now due to the fact that only I can post there. Users could send me private messages and I post their requests on the page. Could mess up the page on the other hand if I’d get lots of requests.
• Do a daily or weekly “best of” stories from other sites that I read.

If you have other ideas let me know. I really like the best of idea.

Oh, and if you could +1 the page and put it in one of your circles, I’d be eternally grateful :)

Oh, and here is the official announcement by Google.

We had some announcements of our own to share in October. Ghacks turned six in the month, and in that time span we have been published more than 11,500 articles on the site. I also announced the 4th Annual Ghacks Christmas Giveaway asking everyone to chime in and post their favorite software that they would like to win a copy of (It is still open by the way).

The layout of this best of list has been redesigned a bit. I decided to put everything into the four categories browser, How-Tos and Tutorials, Windows and Microsoft, and Online and The Internet.

Browser

Mozilla and Google are still pushing out new versions like crazy which is still something that I do not feel particularly happy about. I took a look at Firefox 9 and Opera 12 in October.

Chrome Remote Desktop Beta Extension

Configure Firefox To Install Add-Ons Faster

Firefox, Thunderbird Lagging? Lag Fix Inside

Mozilla Talks Silent Updates, Plans Firefox Service

ProxTube Unblock YouTube Videos

Uninstall Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 Completely

Why are Two Flash Player Plugins Running In Google Chrome?

Why Are 2 Plugin-Container.Exe Processes Running?

How-Tos, Tutorials

Most of the how-tos and tutorials have been browser or Windows related this month. Not many left to share in this category.

How to maintain a good security and backup strategy, Part 1 – the Home

Speed Up Dropbox Download Speeds

Microsoft Windows

News and reviews about Windows and Microsoft have always been strong here on Ghacks. This month has not seen a big announcement or news, other than Microsoft closing the Skype acquisition.

Copy CMD Output Directly To The Clipboard

DNS Benchmark, Speed Test DNS Servers

Free Fake Antivirus Removal Software Updated

Microsoft Patch Day October 2011 Overview

Microsoft Retires Gadgets In Preparation Of Windows 8 Launch

SSD Fresh, Optimize Windows For SSD Usage

Virtual WiFi Router For Windows

Windows Password Resetter, Restore or Reset A Windows Account Pass

Why Are There Two Explorer.exe Processes Running?

Online, The Internet

Here is a selection of Internet related topics that we have covered in October on Ghacks.

Amazon Filler Item Services

Google Rolls Out Https Search For Logged In Users (see also: Google Redirects Your Search To Https? Change It!)

How To Outsource Assignments, Tasks To Free Up Time

Speed Up WordPress Page Loading Times By Removing l10n.js

Where Are Google Search Cached And Similar Links?

If you look back, what were your highlights of October 2011?

The Ghacks Christmas Giveaway is an event taking place from December 1 to December 24 (and sometimes a few days more depending on software availability) where readers of the blog can win commercial software licenses. I have partnered up with great companies like Symantec, Kaspersky, Bitdefender and independent developers that develop gems like Fast Picture Viewer, Sandboxie or Bulk Image Downloader in the past.

I asked you last year which software you’d like to see in the upcoming giveaway, and I’d like to continue this tradition this year.

You can suggest any online service or software, and I will contact the developers to see if they can be convinced to take part in the event. I cannot give you a guarantee that the devs will cooperate but from past experience I can say that most will. Please include the name of the company and the product in your comment (and website if available) so that it is easier for me to find the company website.

Please note that I cannot test Mac or Linux software, and won’t try to get those included in the giveaway unless the company is offering a Windows version as well. If the latter is the case I can include it in the giveaway.

Companies and organizations who produce quality software, hardware or online services can also contact me directly for inclusion in the giveaway. (please use the contact form at the top for that).

I cannot guarantee inclusion at this point in time. If the software or service is regarded highly or of high quality, then chances are good that it will be included.

Each software, hardware and service will be reviewed here on the site. You can check out past reviews here.

Some articles here on Ghacks for instance receive dozens of comments. A lot of the giveaway (which is totally understandable) but also articles that are of interest to many readers (Windows Firewall Notifier is a recent example). Other articles here receive one, two or maybe even no comment at all. The same is true for sites like Addictive Tips and even Freeware Genius.

I’d like to discuss why it is like it is. Why are so many users commenting on company backed websites and less users on others? Is that a numbers game? Do those sites receive more visitors which then results in more comments? Or has it something to do with “trusting” those companies?

While the majority of blogs that get lots of user comments and interaction are company based, there are others run by individuals like the German tech site Caschy’s Blog with ten, twenty and even more comments per article.

I’d like to get there, get more users involved here on Ghacks. I can think of a few reasons why Ghacks receives less user comments than other sites. It could be that the process is to complicated (which I personally doubt since I do not require registration), that my articles are to boring, or that they “say it all” and leave little to discuss. Could also be the public perception or “image” of the site or that Ghacks visitors are more the passive type.

I’d like to start this discussion to get a better understanding of the reasons. Is there anything that I can change on site that would entice you to comment more often? Or is it something that is completely out of my control?

In the beginning I worked two jobs, Ghacks and my regular one. This was a pretty hard time as I had to work before I went to work and after I went home on the site. I was lucky back then that I never experienced any serious down times when I was at work. I’d probably would have taken a sick day or day off then to be able to fix the site.

When the site started, it was all about a tool that a friend of mine had created to make advanced Google searches from the program. It was very handy at that time, but it somehow got dropped along the way. That’s actually where the name Ghacks comes from, Google Hacks.

The day that changed it all was when the guide Using Google To find Movies made it on the homepage of the then popular service Digg. The site, only active for about a week, received tens of thousand of visitors from that exposure. I was lucky enough that I added Adsense some time before to the site. When I found out that the site made more than $100 on that day it made click and the idea was born to make this more than a hobby. Without that, Ghacks may have never become what it is today.

It has been six years now and Ghacks is still more or less a one-man show. Sure, I hired some authors to add different perspectives to the site, but it is me who administrates the site, watches over its financials and contributes to the site on a daily basis. It is a full-time job. Surprisingly though I’m still motivated and do not have that nagging feeling that I do not want to “go” to work because work sucks. I love it.

Now that the site has turned six, I’d like to thank each and every one of you for being a visitor, reader, guest, contributor or whatever it is you are to the site. Without your help, Ghacks would not be where it was today, and more importantly, I would still work my 9 to 5 job.

To celebrate the event, I’d like to provide you with the opportunity to win one of ten Ghacks t-shirts. You can take a look at both available shirt designs here:

The shirts are of high quality. I still have the first shirts I ordered a few years ago when I started offering merchandise.

All you need to do to win a shirt is to comment here on this thread, or mention the birthday on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus or any other site on the Internet (that you are allowed to post on and where it is appropriate).

I pick the winners and contact them asking for their shipping address, t-shirt they want and size. Please note that some black shirt sizes are currently out of stock. It may take some time before they become available again. Good luck everyone.

Update: The winners of the shirts have been notified by email, they are: Paul(us), Ivan K., JFP, JimT, Tinwheeler, Kalmly, Mouser, Midnight, Johan Gustavsson and Matias.

Thanks to everyone for all the great wishes and praise, that was really nice for a change ;)

Mozilla at the same time continued their rapid release process and released the stable version of Firefox 7, and shortly thereafter Firefox 7.0.1 (the same happened for Thunderbird where version 7.0 and 7.0.1 were released).

Mike’s first videos went live on Microsoft’s official support web site, which we want to congratulate him for.

We have published a total of 195 articles in September, which is 6.5 articles per day. The most popular article with 68 comments was “What I do not like about Windows 8″ followed by “How to install Windows 8 from USB key” with 61 comments and “XSUsenet, Free Lifetime Usenet Access” with 61 comments as well.

There were quite a few articles with 0 comments, including a review of Nirsoft’s WebCookiesSniffer, a Team Fortress 2 review and news about the Facebook Subscribe button. I’d like to hear your opinion on this.

Hardware

Only one review this time, would love to do more though.

Dell Precision M6600 Workstation Laptop Review

How-Tos, Tutorials

Tutorials and how-to articles have always seen a strong showing here at Ghacks, and it is my intention to continue with that.

Bitlocker, a Guide for the Uninitiated

Dealing with Protected PDF Documents and Batch Document Conversion

How To Check Your Computer’s Ram For Upgrade Possibilities

How to Create a Flow Chart in Microsoft Word

How To Extract Images Or Text From PDF Documents

The complete guide to Windows 7 Shortcut Keys

Use Dapper To Create RSS Feeds From Any Page, Including Google Plus Posts

Software

Some great programs have been released or updated in September 2011. You find a selection below.

AVG Anti-Virus Free 2012

Free Ringtone Maker

IObit Uninstaller 2.0, Windows Program Uninstaller

Microsoft Mouse Without Borders, Control Multiple PCs With One Mouse

NetworkTrafficView, Network Monitoring, Statistics Tool

Network Planning, Mapping Software PrimeDesktop

Repair Internet Connection Issues With Connectivity Fixer

Wireless Connection and Diagnostic Tool TekWiFi

Web Browser

The majority of browser related items are Firefox related, which can mostly be attributed to the fact that I use the browser as my main Internet browser.

Customize Shortcuts, Firefox Keyconfig Alternative

Delete Old Extension Preferences In Firefox

Firefox: Add HTTP Back To Address Bar

How To Install Google Chrome For Multiple User Accounts

How to Run Portable Google Chrome from a USB Flash Drive

IPvFox, Display All Connections A Web Page Makes

Make Firefox Start Faster On Windows

ShareMeNot, Block Automatic Social Media Button Information Sharing

Windows 8

Lots of Windows 8 articles. You find even more at our sister site Windows 8 News.

5 Things I Love About Windows 8

How To Install Windows 8 From USB Key

What I Do Not Like About Windows 8

Windows 8 Download, Developer Preview

Windows 8 Fast Startup, Faster Boot Times

Windows 8, How To Automatically Log On

Windows 8 Product Key, When Resetting, Reinstalling

Windows 8 Sign-In With A Windows Live ID

Windows 8 unveiled with a focus on Metro

Think we missed something this month? Let me know in the comments.

First issue that I would like to throw into the room is mobile access to Ghacks. There is currently no mobile version of Ghacks available. Mobile users access the same Ghacks site that desktop users access, which may be not the most appropriate version for them to view considering the differences in screen size and connection speed.

The first question that I have therefor is if you would like to see a version of Ghacks optimized for mobile devices such as iPhone or Android smartphones. Users who connect with those devices would benefit from faster page loading times and optimized layouts.

Are you accessing Ghacks sometimes from a mobile device? Let me know your thoughts about it please.

The second question that I have is about mobile coverage here on Ghacks. Roman recently send me an email which got me thinking that it would be nice to review great smartphone applications, tips, tricks and how-to guides as well as important phone updates.

I’m thinking of one article per day maximum to take into account the growing mobile niche. I was thinking of concentrating on iOS and Android coverage, but would like to get to know your opinion about it first. Do you think other phones or devices should be included in the coverage? Or would you want less coverage or no coverage at all here on Ghacks?

I’d also like to take the opportunity to ask writers who are passionate and knowledgeable in this field to come forward and apply for the job. Just leave a comment below and I will contact you. Please note that I need to take a look at a few sample articles.

Now it is your turn. Would you like to see a mobile version of Ghacks? And would you also like to see mobile coverage here on Ghacks?

But it was not only Microsoft that was in the news in August. Mozilla made the news a lot of times. First with the very controversial suggestion to hide Firefox version from the about window which were later dropped, probably due to a lot of flak that the organization received from users who did not agree with the move.

We have seen new Firefox and Thunderbird releases, and read a lot about features of upcoming Firefox versions. Among the new features are better third party add-on security and new add-on compatibility checks, the new graphics component Azure and a general outlook of future Firefox features as well as features in Firefox 8.

Google’s social networking service Google+ seems to have lost some of its momentum in August. Users who want to get an account can get invites from the comment links of our 150 Google Plus Invites post. Google did announce Games in Google+ in August which are currently limited to a handful of games.

Google bought Motorola Mobility in August as well, which some have seen as a defensive move to get the company’s patent portfolio.

August was also the month where CNET introduced the CNET Download.com Installer, a highly controversial installer for most of Cnet’s software offerings.

Communication, Messaging, Email

Thunderbird 6 was the big release in August. The new release did not add a lot of new features, just like the Firefox web browser.

How To Configure Email Filters In Thunderbird

QuickArchiver For Thunderbird, Archive Mails Faster

TeamSpeak 3 Final Released, Android, iOS Versions

Twit Cleaner, Sort Out The Garbage Among Your Twitter Followers

Entertainment

MyP2P shut downw eeks after my review of the live streaming aggregator, and my quest for alternatives resulted in a few high quality sites and lots of spammy ones.

MyP2P, Football Live Stream Aggregator

Myp2p.eu Alternatives

Privacy: Another Reason Why I Won’t Use Origin By Electronic Arts

Hardware Reviews

Mike seems to get quite some hardware from his contacts at Samsung and other companies. I only wish that I would get some hardware to review as well ;)

Samsung Series 5 Chromebook Review

The Web

Lots of great new extensions and tools to test and make your life a little bit easier.

Captcha Trader, Automatic Free Captcha Solving For JDownloader

Chrome Live Sport, Watch Live Sports In Your Browser

Google Dictionary Chrome Extension

How To Create Multiple Firefox Profiles For Specific Tasks

How To Go Back Multiple Pages In Firefox

How To Run Firefox Stable, Beta, Aurora And Nightly Simultaneously

MasterCard SecureCode Explained

Most Popular Google Chrome Themes

New Google Sign-In Page

Operating Systems, mainly Windows

Windows is still the operating system that gets the most attention here at Ghacks.

Analyse The Boot And Shutdown Performance of Windows

Gramps, Free Genealogy Software

How to Set Up a VPN on Windows 7

How To Uninstall The Babylon Toolbar Completely

Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator

NirLauncher, All Nirsoft Applications In One Program

Setting Windows Virtual Memory, why you need to and what about SSDs?

Speed Up Windows Explorer By Disabling Thumbnail Previews

Using the System File Checker to Repair Windows 7

Windows Network Locations: Differences Between Home, Work and Public Networks

Did I miss a story that you liked a lot? Or did we miss to report on something that made waves on the Internet? Let me know in the comments.

It is especially frustrating at the moment to keep track of the development of the Firefox browser. More so than it is with Google’s Chrome, as Mozilla supports older versions of the browser which Google does not. So what’s in store for us in August? We will see Firefox 3.6.20, Firefox 6, Firefox 7 Beta 1 and Firefox 8 Aurora all released on August 16. That’s five releases on one day.

Lets look back at July. I received flak from some readers (who commented once and never came back) for my mini web investment series (why website investments are better than stock market investments and 8 essential tips for web investors).

Global news were dominated by Google Plus and Facebook. Facebook introduced video calling and group chat in July, and Google unlimited photo hosting on Picasa.

We have seen Java 7 released, read an analysis that banks were the best approach to hinder the operation of scammers and spammers on the Internet, and that Microsoft would unveil Windows 8 in September.

Hardware

We do not do lots of hardware reviews here. This can be largely attributed to the fact that we do not get a lot of review samples. Mike got two from Samsung last month, and my review of the wireless headset was based on my own purchase.

• Logitech G930 Wireless PC Gaming Headset Review
• Samsung ML-1865W Laser Printer Review
• Samsung RF711 Gaming Laptop Review

Misc

Misc is a compilation of tutorials, how to and other stories that do not fit into another category.

• Capture Video With MSI Afterburner
• Find Out Where A Website Is Hosted
• Google Plus RSS Feeds
• Moving A Website To A New Host, Server Guide
• My Bank, Mastercard And My Annual Hosting Invoice

Security and Privacy

We have published lots of security related reviews, tips and tutorials here on Ghacks in July. This includes software tips and reviews but also best practices and security related news.

• Avoiding EFS Encryption Disasters in Windows
• Casir, Common and Stubborn Infections Remover
• CloseTheDoor, Identify Local TCP, UDP Listening Ports
• Do You Know What is Running on Your System?
• Google+ Privacy, Notifications, What You Should Check
• Hotmail Blocks Common Passwords, Adds My Friend’s Been Hacked Reporting
• Mozilla BrowserID, Sign-In System
• Windows Firewall Notifier
• Wireless Network Watcher, Find Out Who Is Connected To Your Wi-Fi Network

Software

We have not seen that many software releases in July 2011. Some reviews have been listed under security and privacy, the remaining are accessible below.

• A Short List Of Handy Free Microsoft Outlook Downloads
• Download, Backup Flickr Photos With Fotobounce
• GimeSpace, Extend Your Desktop Horizontally
• Windows 7 MAC Address Changer
• Windows 7 SP1 Downloads

Web Browsing

Lots of news in this category. Google announced the retirement of the Google Toolbar for Firefox, Opera released the first Opera 12 snapshot and Mozilla announced major memory improvements for Firefox.

Googlebar, Google Toolbar Alternative for Firefox

Firefox Plumber, Drop Firefox Memory Usage

Opera Releases First Opera 12 Snapshot

Mozilla Firefox Gets Major Memory Improvements

Toolbar Cleaner, Remove Unwanted Toolbars From Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer

Did I miss a story? Let me know in the comments

Lets start with browsers, as this is something that is constantly in the news all over the world. Firefox was the number one browser here on Ghacks in 2009, with a share of 49.11%, followed by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer with 34,90%, Google Chrome with 6.73%, Safari with 4.02% and Opera with 3.88%.

Things have changed noticeably two years later. Internet Explorer is now the most used browser with a market share of 34.59%, that is only .31% less than two years ago. Firefox dropped significantly from the all time high to 32.14%, a drop of nearly 17% in two year’s time. Chrome managed to get market share and is now sitting at 21.01%, an increase of exactly that 17% that Firefox lost. Safari moved up .30 percent, Opera usage dropped to 2.27%, unless Opera Mini is included in the calculation which would add another 2.29% to Opera’s market share.

When you look at the different browser versions you see the following distribution:

Internet Explorer:

Internet Explorer 8 is the most used browser with 56.59%, followed by Internet Explorer 9 with 17.75%, Internet Explorer 6 with 13.83% and Internet Explorer 7 with 11.79%. Microsoft at least here on Ghacks has a lot of convincing to do to get IE users to switch to more recent versions of the browser. It is likely that the majority of requests that use IE6 or IE7 come from company networks.

Firefox:

The most used Mozilla browser on Ghacks in June 2011 was Firefox 4.0.1 with a share of 44.63%, followed by Firefox 5 with 16.07%, Firefox 3.6.17 with 11.25 and Firefox 4.0 with 4.18%. Many users are still using outdated versions of the browser, Firefox 3.6.3 for instance which is still having a share of 1.38% of all Firefox visits. This highlights one of the core problems of Mozilla: Getting users to update the browser to more recent versions. It needs to be noted that Firefox 5 has been released at the end of June. It is expected that the browser’s market share will rise considerably in July.

Chrome:

Google Chrome is the clear winner when you look at market share gain in the past two years. Most Ghacks visitors run various versions of Chrome 12 and 11. Older versions are still being used, Chrome 10 for instance has a market share of nearly 2%.

Opera Mini:

Opera Mini had more connections in June 2011 than the desktop version of Opera. That’s an increase of nearly 2% over the past two years.

Google Chrome, at least here on Ghacks, managed to snag away market share from the Firefox web browser, and not Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Operating Systems

Windows was the most used operating system back in 2009, with a share of 88.62% of all visits, followed my Apple Macintosh systems with 5.60% and Linux with 4.89%.

The situation has not changed by a lot in two year’s time. Windows is still the most used OS with a share of 84.93%, followed by Macintosh with 4.17% and Linux with 3.66%. Android is having nearly double the visit rate of the iPhone, with 1.41% to 0.77%. This is followed by SymbianOS with 0.76% and iPad with 0.72%.

Mobile use is increasing a lot, and it may be time to get a special theme for mobile users to improve their experience on site.

Windows:

Windows XP was the most used Windows operating system in June with a share of 46.51%, closely followed by Windows 7 with 42.88%. Vista came in third with a share of 9.90%. That’s a drop of 17% for XP in the last two years, and of almost 20% for Vista.

And there is apparently at least one user who is connecting to Ghacks with Windows ME.

Screen Resolution

The majority of Ghacks visitors operate a screen resolution of 1024×768 or more. When you look at individual resolutions you see 1024×768 at the top with a share of 20.59%, followed by 1366×768 with 13.85%, 1280×800 with 11.12% and 1280×1024 with 8.51%.

Screen resolutions have – surprisingly – changed only little when compared to two years ago. In 2009, 1024×768 was the most used resolution with 22%, followed by 1280×800 with 19.26% and 1280×1024 with 16.16%. Only the 1366×768 resolution was nowhere to be seen back then. It has become popular in recent years only, especially on notebook systems but also on the desktop.

Other tidbits

Almost 80% of all Ghacks visitors have Java enabled in their browser. That’s an impressive value, considering that it is likely that the majority does not need Java at all on the web.

The top five countries according to Google Analytics are:

• United States
• India
• United Kingdom
• Brazil
• Canada

Most popular languages of the operating systems are:

• en-us
• en-gb
• en
• pt-br
• fr

The top search engine is Google which refers 60.68% of all search engine visitors followed by Bing with 4.95% and Yahoo with 2.39%.

Anything else that’s missing that you would like to know, or something that you want to add? Let me know in the comments.

Apple got their iCloud up and running, and Microsoft published the first official Windows 8 video.

Mozilla got their rapid release development cycle in full swing and released Firefox 5, Thunderbird 5 and Seamonkey 2.1. Oh, and uTorrent 3 and Opera 11.50 were released as well in June.

When I look at Ghacks I see that all authors posted a total of 210 articles in June, that’s more than six articles per day. It will drop a bit in July though, but we write as many as necessary especially if a great new product comes out.

Browser

We reviewed the usual assortment of tips and extensions. We try our best to include all browsers as best as we can, and I think we did a good job in the last month. Probably the biggest stories were the releases of Firefox 5, Opera 10.5 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 10 Preview 2. Especially Mozilla received some flak this month both for their rapid release cycle as well as for removing the http protocol from the browser.

5 Google Chrome Tips

Firefox Preferences Cleaner, Remove Add-On Preferences On Uninstallation

Microsoft Pushes Out Second Internet Explorer 10 Preview

Mozilla: Firefox 5 Release Means EOL For Firefox 4

Opera Speed Dial Extensions Overview

Super iGoogle, Optimize iGoogle’s Layout To Save Space

The Best Firefox Privacy Add-Ons

Reviews

Mike was the only author to review some hardware here on Ghacks. We’d love to review more but it is up to the companies to provide us with samples (hint).

Acer Iconia Tab W500 Windows 7 Tablet Review

Samsung Series 9 Ultraportable Review… Part 1

Samsung Series 9 Ultraportable Review… Part 2

Online

Lots of movement in the online world. Google+ launched as well as Office 365. Will be interesting to see if Facebook’s upcoming announcement will be able to drop Google’s momentum.

Disable Automatic Photo Tagging Suggestions On Facebook

How To Change Your Primary Facebook Email Address

Make a Hidden Windows Dropbox Folder

Microsoft Updates SkyDrive, Faster, Better, With HTML5 Support

Should You Get A Virtual Credit Card For Online Purchases?

Tutorials

We have posted more tutorials than usually on Ghacks.

An Introduction to IPv6

Backup And Restore Windows Activation

Change Google’s Black Navbar Back To White

Cleaning the Inside of a Computer

Downloading Software From Third Party Sites Makes Sense, Sometimes

Google Takeout, Export Google Data

How To Backup Steam Games

How To Fix Slow Folders In Windows Explorer

How To Merge Avi Movies With VirtualDub

Trimming the Fat in Notepad++

Use Google Docs Like an Admin

Windows

Except for the Windows 8 video, there was not a lot in terms of news. We made up for it with dozens of software reviews.

3 Options To Analyze Past Computer Usage

AppCleaner, Temporary File Cleaner From The Makers Of UpdateStar

Auto Hide Icons On The Windows Desktop

Beware: Avira Partners With Ask And UniBlue

Close All Windows At Once

Hosts File Software Overview

Liquesce, Windows Drive Pooling Software

MakeMKV, Rip DVD, Blu-Ray Discs To Your Computer

Microsoft Office 2010 Service Pack 1 Released

Sort Photos With Image Sorter

The 10 Advantages of Xplorer2

Verdict

June was a busy month. Did we miss something? Let us know in the comments.

Additionally I will, at their request, be making more tutorial videos and providing how-to articles for their support site and for their TechNet newsletter which goes out to IT professionals.

The news has come about because of the publication of my first Microsoft Press book last year, Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out, which became one of the publisher’s top 20 eBooks of 2010, despite only being released at the end of October, and has sat consistently in the top 2% of all paperback sales on Amazon since then.

Personally I find it quite an honour that Microsoft consider my help, support and tutorial materials and videos to be of a high enough quality to be part of the official Microsoft support website.  I know this sounds a bit glib coming from the author of a Windows 7 Troubleshooting book that was published by Microsoft Press, but it really came as a very pleasant surprise that came out of the blue, and I’m genuinely thrilled.

The first five videos to go on the Microsoft website, about the Automated Troubleshooters, reading the Event Viewer, using the (oh so carefully hidden) System File Checker, the very useful Windows Startup Repair and finally how you can manually Repair Corrupt Boot Files were originally made to help promote the book.  Future videos will be made in collaboration with Microsoft and will focus on the things Windows users have the most difficulty with.  The next videos will appear by the end of this month.

There’s also more exciting news coming in the next month or so, but at the moment I’m sworn to secrecy (and quite frankly it’s driving me nuts!) but you’ll be the first to hear, believe me.

You can watch the first five videos on my YouTube page and get the latest news on additional videos for the Microsoft website on my new Facebook page.

May was a month where we have seen many hacks and attempts. The popular online password management service Last Pass/a> for instance was rumored to have been hacked. You can read about my response to this incident here. A security company allegedly managed to bypass Chrome’s sandbox which Google later refuted saying that they used a plugin vulnerability to do so.

May was also the month where Mike gave away his Windows 7 Power Users Guide ebook for free, Facebook introduced Facebook Send and teamed up with Web of Trust, Google it’s new music streaming service Google Music (at least for US users) and smartphone payment system Google eWallet, and Adobe Flash 10.3 was released. The new version of Flash allows the deletion of Flash cookies from within the web browser, provided that the browser supports this feature. At the time of writing, both Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 9 do.

Browser

When you look at web browsers, you will notice that developers are still striving to remove or reduce user interface elements from their browsers. Some of the latest elements have been the address bar and the scroll bar. Accelerated Firefox development is now in full swing, with Firefox 5 expected to be released June 21.

Block Firefox From Re-enabling Disabled Plugins

Firefox 5 Beta Is Here, What’s New?

The Best Firefox Security Add-Ons

How-To

Fixing Disappearing Jumplists Under Windows 7

How To Properly Protect Your Facebook Account, Login

How To Scan Your Music Library For Missing Songs

Mike’s Internet Series

Iran to create its own Internet… Part 1

Does the West want to constrain the Internet..? Part 2

The Dark Web… Part 3

The Internet is Flawed (Discuss)… Part 4

Misc

Bing Search After A Year, The Good And Bad

Building A Custom PC 2011 Part 2: First Draft

GoogleCrashHandler.exe Process Update

Microsoft Report Confirms Lower Infection Rate On Windows 7

PayPal, Your Account Has Been Temporarily Limited!

What’s In A Name: Will Windows 8 Be The Name Of The Next Windows?

Ryan’s Network Troubleshooting

Ryan’s network troubleshooting series covers the basic commands ping, ipconfig, tracert and pathping which every computer user should have heard of at least. They can be very helpful in analyzing connectivity problems.

Network Troubleshooting Basics: The Ping Command

Network Troubleshooting Basics: The Ipconfig Command

Network Troubleshooting Basics: Tracert & Pathping

Network Troubleshooting Basics: Some Simple Steps

Software

We have not seen many software updates in May. The two pdf readers Foxit Reader and Sumatra have been updated.

Filmotech, Comfortable Movie Collection Management Software

HWiNFO32, Computer Hardware Information Software

Universal USB Installer, Install, Run Linux From USB

WhatIsHang Tells You Why A Windows Program Is Not Responding

YouTube Playlist, Favorites, Channel, User, Responses Downloader

If you look back, what does your best of look like? Let us know in the comments.

The day I’ll be in attendance for will be “Deploying and Managing the Modern Desktop” which will include additional subjects including virtualisation.

Desktop technology has marched on: user needs and expectations are changing; the Internet is a different place to 10 years ago and we haven’t even mentioned virtualisation!

You need to think about your desktop and the infrastructure behind it. You need a modern desktop to easily take advantage of all of these technologies, and to enable your people to be productive long into the future. In this demo-filled day, we will look at how to weave technologies like Windows 7, Office 2010, the Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Pack (MDOP), and desktop virtualisation technologies into a coherent sustainable, cost-reducing desktop strategy.

I’ll also be feeding back to you the days events and the news that comes from it.  It’ll certainly be interesting to be on the other side.  I have to admit I’ve not actually been to a Microsoft events before so for my first one to be at their request to help answer questions from IT Pros is quite a personal thrill and a great acknowledgement of the work done by all my colleagues here at gHacks.

For those of you in or near London don’t forget my Geek Meet where there will be staff from Microsoft present and I’ll have signed copies of my Windows 7 Troubleshooting book and a fantastic Windows 7 Tablet, courtesy of ExoPC, to give away.  This social event is open to everyone though you’ll need to enter our competition to be in with a chance of winning the tablet.

I’ve also arranged a Geek Meet the night before. I’ll be there to answer your questions and I’ll be giving away paperback copies of my book Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out. Plus every attendee will get a free eBook of their choice from the O’Reilly / Microsoft Press catalogue, even my book :) I’m also hoping some people from Microsoft UK will be in attendance for drinks and a chat.

Best still, one lucky person will walk away with a state of the art Windows 7 Tablet PC courtesy of ExoPC.com

The tablet has an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 resolution screen, a 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Atom processor and 2Gb of RAM. The hard disk is solid state and comes in 32Gb and 64Gb sizes.

This prize is worth around £600 and is a fantastic giveaway from the company, thanks very much to them. What’s more a representative from ExoPC will be there on the night to answer your questions and give away this fantastic prize.

On the night you will need to bring along a printout (or smartphone) showing you’ve subscribed for your chance to enter and win.

Ashampoo and Sony were hacked in April, and Google Chrome became the first browser to integrate the cleaning of Flash cookies.

It was also the month where I started to write the Discovering Opera series to review core Opera browser features, and re-introduced Game Saturday.

I have reviewed a new batch of Firefox add-ons and tips and Mike visited Microsoft’s UK Headquarters.

Firefox 4.0.1, Thunderbird 3.1.10, Opera 11.10 and Google Chrome 11 Stable were released this month, as well as updates to Adobe Flash and Adobe Reader which once again were plagued by 0-day vulnerabilities.

Hardware

Building A Custom PC 2011 Part 1: The Assessment

Logitech Illuminated Keyboards Review

Toshiba Self-Encrypting Hard Drives With Host Authorization

Security, Privacy

Dropbox Insecure?

Encrypt Your Windows Pagefile To Improve Security

Have You Read the Fine Print for the Amazon Cloud Drive?

How Web Accounts Get Hacked

Lastpass Security Challenge , Test Your Last Pass Passwords

Microsoft April 2011 Patch Day Overview

Microsoft Safety Scanner, Free On-Demand Virus Scanner

Storing Data In The Cloud With Dropbox And TrueCrypt

What To Do When Your Email Account is Compromised

Social Networking

A Brief Guide on Privacy Settings for Facebook

How To Hide From Friends On Facebook Chat

Manage Third Party Access To Google, Twitter, Facebook And Dropbox

Tips, Tricks, Guides

Download Free Music Legally, An Updated Guide

Find Big Emails In Gmail

How To Send An Executable File Via Gmail

How To Search Multiple PDF Documents At Once

Thunderbird Send Later, Schedule Emails

The Web

Google Mail, How To Fix Gmail Attachment Failed Errors

Office 365 Public Beta Begins, Sign-Up Now

YouTube Goes Live!

Web Browser

Chrome Gets Per-Site Permissions to Run Quicktime, Java Plugins

How To Clear A Browser Cache

How To Delete Cookies On A Computer

How To Switch Firefox Update Channels

Internet Explorer 10 Will Not Support Vista, XP

Mozilla Development Specifics Updated, Firefox 5 and 6 Release Dates

Windows

AVG LiveKive Online Backup Service Launches

How To Update Hardware Drivers In Windows

Martview, Best Ebook Reader For PDF E-Books

Streamwriter, Record Internet Radio Stations

Windows Context Menu Manager

You can access all of April’s articles by following this link. Hope you enjoyed the summary, if you have suggestions on how to improve this summary let me know in the comments.

March 2011 was a month with several exciting releases. It was the month of the web browser, that saw releases of Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4, Opera Mobile 11 and Opera Mini 6, and Google Chrome 12.

March was also the month were several Gmail users lost all of their inbox (later recovered), Amazon introduced its new controversial Cloud Drive service and Yahoo Search Direct.

Web browser related articles and guides have seen a surge this month thanks to the releases of new versions. This will go down a bit in coming months.

Backup:

The news that Google lost emails from some users and a personal request made me write the two backup related articles. For True Crypt, it is important to have a backup at hand in case of hard disk failures or header corruption.

How To Backup True Crypt Data To Be Prepared For Emergencies

The Gmail incident has shown that you should backup your emails that are stored exclusively online to be prepared for the worst case scenario.

Use MailStore To Backup Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Emails

Browsing:

Several guides and articles concentrated on the launches of Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9. Some address issues that users experience after upgrading to the new browser.

6 Tips To Get You Started With Firefox 4

Configure Firefox To Delete All Cookies On Exit But Select Ones

Firefox 4 URL Trimming, Display Full Web Addresses

Firefox Download Guide, How To Download The Web Browser

How To Add Missing HTML5 Video Support To Your Browser

How To Upgrade, Downgrade Google Chrome

Improve Firefox’s Image Viewer With Image Tools

Internet Explorer 9 Launch, All The Information You Need

Mozilla Demos Web Apps Store

Resetting Firefox, How To Start Fresh With Firefox 4

Opera Hardware Acceleration Demo Is Blazingly Fast

Play Flash Games Lag Free In Fullscreen In Google Chrome

Web Browser Benchmark Results Comparison

Why You Should Install Internet Explorer 9

Downloading:

How To Download Facebook Videos

Email:

How To Block Spam With A Secondary Email Account

Linux:

Linux command line tips: wget

Review: openSUSE 11.4

What will the new GNOME desktops mean for other Linux desktops?

Misc:

Giganews 1000-Days Retention Giveaway

How To Fill Out PDF Forms On Your Computer

How To Find Free Music On iTunes

Search:

Both Google and Yahoo have made changes to their search engines in March. Google introduced search results blocking and their +1 button feature that mimics Facebook Like.

Remove Google Properties From Search With A Comma

The ultimate tech search engine is a custom Google search engine that only searches the most popular tech sites, and nothing else. It is great for tech searches.

The Ultimate Tech Search Engine

Troubleshooting:

Several basic guides where posted in the troubleshooting section last month. These articles can be very helpful in certain situations.

How To Change A Windows Account Name And User Profile Folder Name

How To Create, Use A Windows Password Reset Disk

How To Edit, Reset The Windows Hosts File

How To Flush The DNS Cache In Windows

How To Remove Services In Windows

Taking the Pain Out of Reinstalling Windows

Updates:

Mozilla Releases Firefox 3 Security Updates

Firefox 4 Download Available, Release Tomorrow

Microsoft March 2011 Patch Day Overview

Opera Mobile 11, Opera Mini 6 Mobile Browsers Released

Windows:

There were not many new software releases this month. The two programs that impressed be the most in March are the Kanji Sketch Pad and the media player UMPlayer.

Clipboard Master, Windows Clipboard Manager

Dropbox Portable AHK, Run Dropbox Without Installation

Kanji Sketch Pad, Learn To Draw Kanji

New To Windows 7? Do This First!

Sort Your Music with Mp3 Folder Structure Maker

UMPlayer, Mplayer Fork With Interesting Features

Have anything to add? Let me know in the comments.

More than three years have past and looking back, I can firmly say that this was the best decision of my life. It was not always easy and I’m still struggling at times. This post is about the good things, bad things, and advice that I would like to share.

Full time blogging is not for everyone. You are from that moment on responsible for your well being, and that of your family. You need to get up and write. I write 365 days a year which may be an extreme case.

I learned to reduce my output at times to recover and gain strengths. Regular Ghacks reader may have noticed that I started to write less on weekends and holidays. Those are my recovery periods. I still write between one and four posts on these days, but the reduced output gives me time to concentrate on other things.

I have not been on a lot of holidays in the past three years, my trip to Israel and Vienna have been the two exceptions. I try to write and schedule articles in advanced to enjoy those trips. Still, I have to spend at least an hour or so per day to check the blogs, websites, servers and emails.

I met lots of great people, fellow bloggers, entrepreneurs and companies, and even more charlatans and thiefs. When I began blogging in 2005 I read all the posts of the self-proclaimed problogging gurus. This stopped when I realized that they had nothing to offer but self-promotion.

I started concentrating on the business aspects and learned a lot about SEO and business marketing at that time. It took me more than two years to get there, a process from noob to someone who knows what he is doing online, what works, and what does not.

Being a fulltime blogger has other implications. Bloggers can make money in two ways: Advertisement or writing content. If you have your own website you usually combine the two. Managing the advertisement side of business takes lots of time, especially if you have a blog with visitors from all over the world.

Advertising wise, you usually make use of Google Adsense, because it can deliver ads to a world wide audience. Banner advertisements on the other hand are usually limited to a few English speaking countries. Some companies use low paying ads for the rest of the world, the majority tends to ignore it.

Another advertising related problem is that you often get emails from new companies who want to sell your ad space. You know have the option to try them out to see if they perform better than your current company, or deny the proposal outright. If you try them out you may end up with a big dip in revenue if they perform not as well as your previous advertiser. It seldom happened that a new company outperformed my active advertisers. I suggest A-B tests for those cases which give you better comparison options.

Then there is the webmaster side of things. If you run your own sites, you are responsible for your websites and servers. You need to make sure that they are accessible, that the contents are up to date, that they load fast enough, that bills are paid, domain names renewed and so on.

It is possible to automate a few of the things. I’m working with a company that monitors my websites and servers 24/7. If anything that is monitored goes down, I get an SMS no matter where I’m. (see Monitor Your Servers With Livewatch).

But you cannot automate everything. I spend about 30 to 60 minutes per day for webmaster related tasks. Fix broken links, moderate comments, update scripts, make changes to the pages, design or structure of the site, check web statistics and reply to users and companies who contacted me.

This can become a fulltime job on some days, for instance if a site goes down, if a site is moved to a new server or if I have made the decision to change a site’s theme (never change a running system).

You think that being a writer, webmaster and marketing expert is all that you need to be to be an independent full time blogger? Think again. Enter SEO.

Search engine optimization, love it or hate it. Still, it is one of the essential skills that you need. You could outsource your SEO, but believe me when I say that you will have a very, very, very, hard time finding a reliable SEO company that does your SEO for acceptable rates.

Don’t even think of hiring a SEO on a webmaster forum. If you frequent there you may have seen the packages that they offer. 20k visitors for $x, Mininets, 10,000 backlinks for $49, profile links, web 2.0 links, comment links, autoblogs, private blog networks and more.

The core problem with the majority of offers is that they can hurt the site’s rankings, besides that the majority of them rely on link building that many would call outright spam.

SEO is in my opinion the hardest part. If you do something wrong you can crash your site, get it banned in the search engines. If you want to do it right, you need to monitor every move which takes lots of time and effort on your part.

Without SEO on the other hand, your site won’t take off. Sure, you may get lucky and see an article of your site promoted on sites like Slashdot or Reddit, or constantly mentioned on popular blogs like Lifehacker. But that’s an exception, not the rule.

Traffic does not automatically come even if you have the best content about a certain topic. That’s where SEO comes into play, to get that content into the open, recognized.

You can do a lot of SEO groundwork on the site, onpage optimizations, good internal linking structure and so on, but you eventually come to a point where you need to add offsite SEO. If you can affort it hire a reputable SEO company. Most bloggers, including me, cannot affort that on the other hand.

One of the options that I want to explore in the coming months is guest blogging on other sites.

Lastly, as a blogger you are also dependent on others; Especially on search engines, referring sites and your visitors of course. Ghacks experienced two huge drops in traffic after recent Google algorithm changes. A false positive so to say but nevertheless extremely hurting. both financially and mentally. It was never that bad that I thought about quitting, but it was close. The site recovered each time after three months.

The lesson I learned from that? Diversify your traffic profile. Get a newsletter, a Facebook page, Twitter. Get the word out on sites like Reddit, Yahoo answers, become a brand that people know and trust. You cannot be dependent on one main source of traffic.

I would do a lot of things differently if I would have to start all over again starting with the domain name. Should have picked .com and not .net. It is not a major thing so.
Still, blogging is fun and while it is stressful at times it is also very rewarding. I can work from home, and every other place with an Internet connection.

The post has gotten a bit longer than I wanted it to become. I apologize for that. If you have any questions about blogging, or Ghacks let me know and I try my best to answer them.