Five Browers Compete on your Desktop: What is your browser of choice?

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There are now so many competing browsers on your PC that, after years of a monopoly by Windows’ Internet Explorer, we’re finally having some competition. And the stuff coming out is AMAZING! This post will look at five of the choices now available for PC users running Windows XP or above. Do note: many of these browsers have Mac and Linux installs or variations. I’m writing this on a system that is in essence a five-year old system with some modifications. It is also not XP SP2. I decided not to upgrade the software on this system. So for browsers, what choices do you have on an older system? Surprisingly, quite a few.

Firefox 3

My first browser of choice is the venerable Firefox 3. It’s stable, fast and has an endless array of plugins that can be added to your installation. The current version has, I’ve found, been a little unstable on my platforms when it has invoked the Gmail site, causing my PC to slow unduly and sometimes even crash. But perhaps that is the fault of my nearly six year-old PC system! The add-ons are great but can also add extra burden to your PC or even crash Firefox. This installed fine on my older PC.

firefox browser

To download Firefox, visit http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ or click on the image.

Flock 1.2

A seriously interesting variant of FireFox is Flock. In essence, this is Firefox in social mode and provides a lot of interaction with Web 2.0 sites, like Flickr, YouTube, Blogger, Facebook, Digg, etc.. One of the reasons I like this version is that there are a number of ways to interact with the Web 2.0 and it facilitates each of these methods. For example, you can post directly to your blog, upload images, or interact with people on Facebook without closing your browser window or what you are looking at. Plus, many of the plugins for Firefox also work for Flock. It also installed well on my PC. It is a bit of a resource hog, but so far hasn’t crashed my system.

flock browser

To download Flock, visit http://www.flock.com/download or click on the image.

Chrome

I use Google’s Chrome at work and on my small portable, but originally I couldn’t install on this PC because of some technical reason or other about it not being XPSP2. Anyway, I liked Chrome because of its ease of use, relative speed, and its independent windows. I hate losing my work when one tab or window becomes unstable because of slowloading scripts or worse. Google designed a good looking browser that helped to mitigate that. For a while, I used it regularly at work, but I had hoped that it would install on this computer. And it did. But each time I use it, it crashed. Right now, it refuses to load any pages. So I haven’t any screenshots of it. It just refused to work. I can’t recommend this for older computers at all. It will install but it refuses to run.

No download link is provided since this failed to run properly on my system. You can google it yourself!

Opera

I’ve been using Opera for sites that were causing problems for Firefox and I’ve been impressed at its power, speed and ease of use. It was far more innovative in its GUI than any of the other browsers and is offered on a far bigger array of platforms than any other browser. While I do not use it everyday, it is my backup browser of choice because it is so rugged. Not all sites, however, play nicely with Opera. Its strengths lie in its speed, size and its ability to provide browsing, rss feeds and mail/chat services in a small and powerful format. It was the first browser with tabbing, to my recollection, and has the ability to add widgets. It also runs quickly on my system taking up a little ram only.

opera browser

To download Opera, visit http://www.opera.com/browser/ or click on the image.

Apple’s Safari

I’ve reviewed Safari before, but I was frustrated for a number of reasons with Safari. I didn’t like the page rendering, it didn’t install on older machines like mine, and I didn’t take to it immediately because many of Firefox’s conveniences weren’t provided. I was able to install it on my work machine but it didn’t seem to like SP1. Now however, Safari 4 beta installed smoothly, runs fairly quickly on my system. It seems to borrow heavily from Google Chrome’s stylised offering, with buttons in the top right, and the private browsing feature. It’s too early to tell if I will switch at home to Safari. I didn’t at school and eventually removed Safari 3. Who knows? I might even keep it this time.

apple safari

To download Safari, visit http://www.apple.com/safari/welcome/ or click on the image.

And now the proof of the pudding, which browser uses the most resources when showing my website’s first page which comes in at less than 600Kb.

browser resources

It’s Safari which is using over 250MB of Memory Usage. Flock and Firefox are second and third. And Opera comes in at the bottom. So, Opera really is an efficient, lower resource, more flexible browser! Why do I not use it more?

Which browsers do you have installed on your computer? What do you prefer? Which are less reliable? Share your views…

Why I quit Izea, Payperpost and SocialSpark

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About two and a bit years ago, I started working for a company that was called PayPerPost. In essence, it was a simple concept: get advertisers to pay bloggers for posts about products and services that interest them.

Over the past two years, I blogged on a huge variety of opportunities for PayPerPost (and much less so, SocialSpark). At one point, I even experimented with being an Advertiser and created several opps for InvestorBlogger Dot Com.

But business for PayPerPost has been up and down for me for the past twelve months. Some months I had a good run at the opps, but in the past six months, I have only taken a few opps. Mostly because I have been segmented out of these opps by virtue of being in Asia.

Then in September, I returned to the UK where I updated my address for comparison. I was shocked at all the new opps that were available to me just because I was now in “Europe”. So after returning to Taiwan, I had to consider what my course of action was to be.

At that point, PayPerPost suddenly dropped all the floors on opportunity pricing from $5.00 to 50c or less. While there were a lot of opps now in the system, in what was disingenuously called ‘an experiment’, most were for very little money at all. At that point, I called it quits. I wrote and requested to be removed from Payperpost and SocialSpark.

This post outlines my initial response, Izea’s reply, and my response to them (since I couldn’t login to post the comment to the author of the reply). I’m now posting it here instead.

Post 1: Quitting

Please remove my account. I’m done with SocialSpark and Izea in general. Sorry. I don’t do blog posts for 25c and links for 50c. I would rather find other ways to monetize my blog.

Post 2: Idea’s Reply

Jamie Kite, Official Rep, replied 2 hours ago

Hi Kenneth,

I am sorry to hear that you are leaving the IZEA network. Before you go, there are a few things I wanted to clarify for you. First, the minimum offer amount for a Sponsored Post in SocialSpark is $5.00. You may have noticed other Opportunities out there that pay less, specifically Affiliate programs, Blog Sponsorships and CPC Opportunities. None of these Opportunity types requires you to write a post.

Affiliate Opportunities pay per conversion, so you can earn the offer amount over and over again, as many times as a visitor to your site completes the advertiser’s requirements (this may be filling out a form, purchasing a product, or signing up for a service). The offer amounts on these vary from a little less than a Sponsored Post to many times the average offer amount for a Post, depending on the requirements for conversion. Payment for Affiliate Opportunities happens 30 days after a conversion occurs.

CPC Opportunities provide an even greater opportunity for monetization. You get paid each time a visitor, follower, or friend clicks a link to an advertiser’s site. If you’re on Twitter or Facebook this can be especially lucrative if you have many friends or followers. As always, we require disclosure on these paid links. And what’s better, you get paid within a few days (or less) after each click.

Blog Sponsorships may also have an offer amount that is less than a typical Sponsored Post, but they are payed per day. So if you take a $1.00 sponsored post for 30 days, you end up with a much bigger payout in the end. All you have to do is make sure you have ITK on your blog(s).

We’re sorry to see you go, but I did want to reach out and clarify the difference between the Opportunity types in SocialSpark so that your expectation wasn’t that you would get anything less than $5.00 for a Sponsored Post. If the other Opportunity types with lower offer amounts aren’t your thing, that’s okay…

Post 3: My response to Izea (since I couldn’t post it on their network)

Thanks for contacting me.

I saw the new opportunities on SS, but it’s been such a while that I found anything I could do. Despite having two fairly popular blogs with largely N.American traffic, I repeatedly found myself with the bottom of the barrel opps in both SS and PPP.

Even having a PR3 didn’t make things much better. Being based in Asia, I find that there is almost nothing I can do on PPP/SS these days. So, until things look up for me on Izea, I see little or no point in having the code on my blogs… It’s sad, but there it is. The system that Ted created for bloggers ends up excluding bloggers whose blogs are fairly decent. But then Izea spends undue effort removing all the splogs that can legitimately get into PPP/SS and legitimately take those opps.

I”m afraid I have much more success blogging for another company than Izea now. Each time I login to SS/PPP just reminded me of how I was segmented out of the running for 99% of the opps available. Even when opps are available in SS, I’m unable to take any of them for similar reasons: I’m based in Asia.

So for a trial I switched my PPP account to ‘uk’ region, my home and I was shocked at how different things were. I couldn’t legitimately take any of the opps because of the zoning issue. So I didn’t. That’s when I stopped blogging for Izea.

If you could understand my frustration, I have two good blogs (one pr3, one formerly pr2), both Alexa 1million and under, with over 5000 page views a month between them, and majority N. American traffic, and there is so little I can do, it’s not even worth the time logging in. Eventually, enough is enough.

Wishing you all well,
Kenneth

So that’s it. I already removed all the PPP/SS codes from all of my blogs, converted the links, and removed all traces of Payperpost except the archives. If you’re based in North America, then this may be a valuable way to make some money. You’ll certainly learn a lot. I did. I’m extremely grateful for the experience of blogging for Izea. But all good things must end, and indeed they have. It’s time to move on and find new ways to blog, new readers to read my blogs, new topics to write about, and new methods to monetize. Good luck, Ted and all at Izea. I’ll check back from time to time.

Check your mortgage rates: a handy calculator

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Needing a little help calculating your mortgage payments? Try this calculator. It may not be 100% accurate because of all the possible variations, charges, etc.., but with declining mortgage rates over the past few months, it will help you to do back-of-the-napkin type calculations to check your mortgage isn’t being grossly overcharged.

I noticed in my own bank statements how quickly the local bank was to raise rates in the past two years, but I am still waiting for a commensurate fall in the rates. I could very well be using this when I go to the bank to update the passbook.

Calculator is provided by Mortgage Calculator.

This article is guest written by Adam Hefner, and examines the different kinds of mortgage rates you may end up paying. I hope you find this useful.

How to calculate a mortgage payment is one of your most important decisions when purchasing a home. Rather than be a mathematician, you will just need to learn a little bit about the process and what it is all about. You will have many choices when it comes to figuring out what your payment will be. Key to the process is what your credit is and what you will want to borrow.

What kind of mortgage do you want? Whether you choose an adjusted rate mortgage (ARM), a fixed, or a balloon type payment will depend mainly on how much money you make and what your credit score is. These variations will cost you dearly if you are not well informed about their differences!

If you get a balloon mortgage you will have to pay it off or refinance it every 5 or 7 years generally. Interest rates can change daily and so will your ARM. Your rates could start as low as 5% and go up passed 8% in a short period. The rates don’t stop there either; they could go very high, with no cap. Don’t make the mistake of comparing a low ARM rate to a higher fixed rate, the fixed rate won’t change but the ARM will. With a fixed rate of 7% what you start with is what you will end your mortgage rate with.

Do you have a large or small income? When a loan agent reviews your loan they will look at you using between one fourth and less than one half of what you make monthly or yearly. The best bet is not to spend more than a third of the money you make each month on your house payment. Basically you can look at it like this, if you are bringing home $1200.00, you will want your house payment around $400.

Are you aware of your credit score? The four basic categories for credit scoring are poor, fair, good and excellent. If you have good or excellent credit, the interest rate that you are offered is usually going to be lower. If your credit is in the low ranges, you can expect to see higher interest rates. Most mortgage loans are based on simple interest.

One type of simple interest loan, the amount of interest is added each day. If your payment on the first day is $360, the next day would be $370 and so on. Each day your interest is added until you pay for that month. When you have made your payment, your principle will go down (the base loan amount), and interest will be added to that smaller amount. So you will be saving money each time you do this by paying less interest.

Mainstream mortgages are usually calculated as monthly simple interest. Regardless of what day you pay your mortgage it will not change what you owe because the interest is charged monthly, as long as you pay on time. When using a mortgage calculator it is important to know which type of interest you are going to go with, daily or monthly.

When you decide on how to calculate a mortgage payment, make sure you are familiar with all of the terms associated with your loan. You will have a choice of simple or advanced models. You will get a bigger financial picture when you use the more advanced mortgage calculators.

Save time and learn the best way to calculate a mortgage payment from your own home. For more, visit http://www.MortgageLoans-101.com where you’ll find this and plenty more on your mortgage loan needs.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Adam_Hefner