If you are interested in Optimizing your Website, which you should be, read this primer.
"SEO Tips - 4 Deadly SEO Mistakes You Must Avoid
By Cheow Yu Yuan, Saturday, 28th March 2009
Are you getting mediocre results from SEO? If yes, this article is for you. To achieve success with SEO, you must target the right key phrases and build links consistently. It is a continuous process - not a one-time effort.
With this in mind, let us take a look at the 4 deadly SEO mistakes that you must avoid at all cost. These are the mistakes that many optimizers made that prevent them from getting successful results:
1. You do not tag your pages with relevant key phrases. This is the most common mistake that many webmasters made. I believe you have seen websites that place only their company names in their Title tags. Title tags are words that appear on the top left hand side of your Internet browser. You must place keywords in your Title tag because search engines give a lot of weight to it. The title tag is like the Title of a book. It tells readers what the book is about. Likewise, the title tag tells search engines what your website is about. If you are trying to get higher rankings for a keyword but it is not present in your title tag, it is very hard for search engines to award you with high rankings. Therefore, make sure that your title tag describes the content of your page and place important keywords right at the front of it.
2. You do not have enough content or your content is outdated. SEO is more than just tagging your pages. You need to have enough content for search engines to read. To rank high on search engine listings, you must place keywords in your content. Moreover, if your website content is outdated, search engines will visit your site less often, and thus view it as less important. This also prevents your site from getting higher rankings in search engine listings.
3. You optimize the wrong keywords. If you are trying to optimize keywords that are too generic, it is very hard for you to achieve success from your SEO effort. This is because you will get yourself into a more competitive battlefield with other optimizers. So, spend some time to do your research and look for key phrases with lesser competition but relevant to your business. Remember that if you optimize keywords that are not relevant or too generic, even if you achieve high rankings for them, there will be no conversion.
4. You do not build link consistently. Link building is a process of getting more incoming links to your website. Quality inbound links will help your website to achieve higher rankings for competitive keywords. But link building is a continuous process. If you never do it consistently, you will not achieve good result from SEO. So, always build links consistently by using article marketing, blog commenting, directory submissions, and other common strategies that optimizers are using.
These are the 4 deadly SEO mistakes that you must avoid at all cost. Good luck!"
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Here's hoping Verizon gets the iPhone!
AT&T's network is vastly inferior to other cell compaines and their customer service has to rank at the very bottom. I hope Verizon gets this deal, so I can replace the iPhone that I dumped.
Verizon Said to Be in Talks for the iPhone
By MATT RICHTEL
Published: April 27, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO — The iPhone may be poised to shake up the cellphone industry a second time.
Apple, the maker of the popular smartphone, is conducting high-level discussions with Verizon Wireless to sell a version of the iPhone that would work on Verizon’s network, according to a person briefed on the negotiations. The phone could be available as soon as next year.
The person, who requested anonymity because the deal isn’t completed, said discussions between top company executives intensified two weeks ago.
The iPhone presently is available exclusively on AT&T’s wireless network. That arrangement has lured millions of new customers to AT&T and lifted the company’s revenue in a recession.
The iPhone’s touch screen, GPS capabilities and 25,000 or so downloadable applications made it an instant hit. It has energized competitors who make look-alikes and given hope to device makers and wireless carriers that fretted over where to find growth in a market in which many adults already own a cellphone.
But while its exclusivity has certainly added to its desirability, it also limited Apple’s market for the popular phone. Were Verizon to begin offering the iPhone — whether exclusively or as a competitor to AT&T — it would be a significant development in the increasingly important battle for smartphone users, said Roger Entner, an industry analyst with Nielsen AIG. It would give Verizon, which sells Samsung, Palm and BlackBerry smartphones, another device to lure subscribers who do not prefer the AT&T network.
“The iPhone turned AT&T into a serious competitor now neck-and-neck with Verizon,” he said. If Verizon gets a contract to sell the iPhone, he said, “it will be another major shift.”
Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless, declined to comment on whether Verizon and Apple were talking. An Apple spokeswoman said that the company was “very happy” with its relationship with AT&T.
“AT&T is a very good partner,” said the spokeswoman, Natalie Kerris. “We have no plans to change the relationship.”
She declined to comment on discussions between Apple and Verizon Wireless.
In a recent quarterly conference call with investors, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, cast some doubt on the prospect of an imminent deal with Verizon. He said that Apple was wary of building a phone for a network using C.D.M.A. technology — which Verizon’s current network uses — because, Mr. Cook said, the C.D.M.A. infrastructure may have a short life span.
Verizon, however, is moving to a new network in 2010 that would not rely on C.D.M.A technology. Verizon has said previously that even as it deploys its new network, it plans to retain its C.D.M.A. network for a time to transmit voice communications.
The person who had been briefed on discussions between Verizon and Apple said that it was not out of the question that Apple could build an iPhone for the current network.
Apple has not publicly disclosed the financial terms of its deal with AT&T or the duration of its exclusive deal, which began in 2007. Some industry analysts say they believe the arrangement ends in 2010.
Mark Siegel, a spokesman from AT&T, said the company was thrilled with its partnership with Apple. But he had no comment on the company’s own discussions with Apple about extending its arrangement. He said he had no comment on the discussions between Verizon and Apple.
AT&T’s most recent financial quarter showed the influence of the phone on its business. During that first quarter, AT&T said it activated 1.6 million new iPhones — more than 40 percent of them new to AT&T. During that period, AT&T had 1.2 million overall net subscriber additions, indicating that iPhones made a considerable impact on the company’s ability to grow, Mr. Entner said.
“Without the iPhone, their performance in the first quarter would have been worse than T-Mobile’s,” Mr. Entner said.
Verizon has done fine without the iPhone. It added 1.3 million customers in the first three months of the year, though many came from its acquisition of Alltel. Revenue rose 30 percent to $15.1 billion in the first quarter.
Verizon Communications, which owns Verizon Wireless in a joint venture with Vodafone, reported Monday that its net income grew 5 percent in the first quarter to $3.21 billion, or 58 cents a share, from $3.05 billion, or 57 cents a share, a year ago. Revenue rose almost 12 percent to $26.6 billion.
Doing business with Apple does carry a cost. Ed Snyder, an analyst with Charter Equity Research, said that AT&T has spent around $2 billion to subsidize the cost of the iPhones — selling them to consumers well below what it pays Apple for the phones. AT&T does not get a share of revenue from the iPhone App Store.
Further, Mr. Snyder said, the phones put heavy stress on the AT&T network because iPhone users tend to send and receive data more heavily than users of other phones.
That heavy use has its upside. Mr. Entner said that the typical iPhone user generates for AT&T around $85 in revenue a month, 40 percent more than users of other phones.
“It’s been a net plus,” Mr. Snyder said of AT&T’s relationship with Apple. “But it’s been more of a mixed blessing than most people view it as.”
Verizon Said to Be in Talks for the iPhone
By MATT RICHTEL
Published: April 27, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO — The iPhone may be poised to shake up the cellphone industry a second time.
Apple, the maker of the popular smartphone, is conducting high-level discussions with Verizon Wireless to sell a version of the iPhone that would work on Verizon’s network, according to a person briefed on the negotiations. The phone could be available as soon as next year.
The person, who requested anonymity because the deal isn’t completed, said discussions between top company executives intensified two weeks ago.
The iPhone presently is available exclusively on AT&T’s wireless network. That arrangement has lured millions of new customers to AT&T and lifted the company’s revenue in a recession.
The iPhone’s touch screen, GPS capabilities and 25,000 or so downloadable applications made it an instant hit. It has energized competitors who make look-alikes and given hope to device makers and wireless carriers that fretted over where to find growth in a market in which many adults already own a cellphone.
But while its exclusivity has certainly added to its desirability, it also limited Apple’s market for the popular phone. Were Verizon to begin offering the iPhone — whether exclusively or as a competitor to AT&T — it would be a significant development in the increasingly important battle for smartphone users, said Roger Entner, an industry analyst with Nielsen AIG. It would give Verizon, which sells Samsung, Palm and BlackBerry smartphones, another device to lure subscribers who do not prefer the AT&T network.
“The iPhone turned AT&T into a serious competitor now neck-and-neck with Verizon,” he said. If Verizon gets a contract to sell the iPhone, he said, “it will be another major shift.”
Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless, declined to comment on whether Verizon and Apple were talking. An Apple spokeswoman said that the company was “very happy” with its relationship with AT&T.
“AT&T is a very good partner,” said the spokeswoman, Natalie Kerris. “We have no plans to change the relationship.”
She declined to comment on discussions between Apple and Verizon Wireless.
In a recent quarterly conference call with investors, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, cast some doubt on the prospect of an imminent deal with Verizon. He said that Apple was wary of building a phone for a network using C.D.M.A. technology — which Verizon’s current network uses — because, Mr. Cook said, the C.D.M.A. infrastructure may have a short life span.
Verizon, however, is moving to a new network in 2010 that would not rely on C.D.M.A technology. Verizon has said previously that even as it deploys its new network, it plans to retain its C.D.M.A. network for a time to transmit voice communications.
The person who had been briefed on discussions between Verizon and Apple said that it was not out of the question that Apple could build an iPhone for the current network.
Apple has not publicly disclosed the financial terms of its deal with AT&T or the duration of its exclusive deal, which began in 2007. Some industry analysts say they believe the arrangement ends in 2010.
Mark Siegel, a spokesman from AT&T, said the company was thrilled with its partnership with Apple. But he had no comment on the company’s own discussions with Apple about extending its arrangement. He said he had no comment on the discussions between Verizon and Apple.
AT&T’s most recent financial quarter showed the influence of the phone on its business. During that first quarter, AT&T said it activated 1.6 million new iPhones — more than 40 percent of them new to AT&T. During that period, AT&T had 1.2 million overall net subscriber additions, indicating that iPhones made a considerable impact on the company’s ability to grow, Mr. Entner said.
“Without the iPhone, their performance in the first quarter would have been worse than T-Mobile’s,” Mr. Entner said.
Verizon has done fine without the iPhone. It added 1.3 million customers in the first three months of the year, though many came from its acquisition of Alltel. Revenue rose 30 percent to $15.1 billion in the first quarter.
Verizon Communications, which owns Verizon Wireless in a joint venture with Vodafone, reported Monday that its net income grew 5 percent in the first quarter to $3.21 billion, or 58 cents a share, from $3.05 billion, or 57 cents a share, a year ago. Revenue rose almost 12 percent to $26.6 billion.
Doing business with Apple does carry a cost. Ed Snyder, an analyst with Charter Equity Research, said that AT&T has spent around $2 billion to subsidize the cost of the iPhones — selling them to consumers well below what it pays Apple for the phones. AT&T does not get a share of revenue from the iPhone App Store.
Further, Mr. Snyder said, the phones put heavy stress on the AT&T network because iPhone users tend to send and receive data more heavily than users of other phones.
That heavy use has its upside. Mr. Entner said that the typical iPhone user generates for AT&T around $85 in revenue a month, 40 percent more than users of other phones.
“It’s been a net plus,” Mr. Snyder said of AT&T’s relationship with Apple. “But it’s been more of a mixed blessing than most people view it as.”
Monday, April 27, 2009
G.E.’s Breakthrough Can Put 100 DVDs on a Disc
By STEVE LOHR
Published: April 26, 2009
General Electric says it has achieved a breakthrough in digital storage technology that will allow standard-size discs to hold the equivalent of 100 DVDs.
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image
Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
Brian Lawrence leads G.E.’s holographic storage program.
The storage advance, which G.E. is announcing on Monday, is just a laboratory success at this stage. The new technology must be made to work in products that can be mass-produced at affordable prices.
But optical storage experts and industry analysts who were told of the development said it held the promise of being a big step forward in digital storage with a wide range of potential uses in commercial, scientific and consumer markets.
“This could be the next generation of low-cost storage,” said Richard Doherty, an analyst at Envisioneering, a technology research firm.
The promising work by the G.E. researchers is in the field of holographic storage. Holography is an optical process that stores not only three-dimensional images like the ones placed on many credit cards for security purposes, but the 1’s and 0’s of digital data as well.
The data is encoded in light patterns that are stored in light-sensitive material. The holograms act like microscopic mirrors that refract light patterns when a laser shines on them, and so each hologram’s recorded data can then be retrieved and deciphered.
Holographic storage has the potential to pack data far more densely than conventional optical technology, used in DVDs and the newer, high-capacity Blu-ray discs, in which information is stored as a pattern of laser-etched marks across the surface of a disc. The potential of holographic technology has long been known. The first research papers were published in the early 1960s.
Many advances have been made over the years in the materials science, optics and applied physics needed to make holographic storage a practical, cost-effective technology. And this year, InPhase Technologies, a spinoff of Bell Labs of Alcatel-Lucent, plans to introduce a holographic storage system, using $18,000 machines and expensive discs, for specialized markets like video production and storing medical images.
To date, holographic storage has not been on a path to mainstream use. The G.E. development, however, could be that pioneering step, according to analysts and experts. The G.E. researchers have used a different approach than past efforts. It relies on smaller, less complex holograms — a technique called microholographic storage.
A crucial challenge for the team, which has been working on this project since 2003, has been to find the materials and techniques so that smaller holograms reflect enough light for their data patterns to be detected and retrieved.
The recent breakthrough by the team, working at the G.E. lab in Niskayuna, N.Y., north of Albany, was a 200-fold increase in the reflective power of their holograms, putting them at the bottom range of light reflections readable by current Blu-ray machines.
“We’re in the ballpark,” said Brian Lawrence, the scientist who leads G.E.’s holographic storage program. “We’ve crossed the threshold so we’re readable.”
In G.E.’s approach, the holograms are scattered across a disc in a way that is similar to the formats used in today’s CDs, conventional DVDs and Blu-ray discs. So a player that could read microholographic storage discs could also read CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs. But holographic discs, with the technology G.E. has attained, could hold 500 gigabytes of data. Blu-ray is available in 25-gigabyte and 50-gigabyte discs, and a standard DVD holds 5 gigabytes.
“If this can really be done, then G.E.’s work promises to be a huge advantage in commercializing holographic storage technology,” said Bert Hesselink, a professor at Stanford and an expert in the field.
The G.E. team plans to present its research data and lab results at an optical data storage conference in Orlando next month.
Yet, analysts say, the feasibility of G.E.’s technology remains unproved and the economics uncertain. “It’s always well to remember that the most important technical specification in any storage device, however impressive the science behind it, is price,” said James N. Porter, an independent analyst of the storage market.
When Blu-ray was introduced in late 2006, a 25-gigabyte disc cost nearly $1 a gigabyte, though it is about half that now. G.E. expects that when they are introduced, perhaps in 2011 or 2012, holographic discs using its technology will be less than 10 cents a gigabyte — and fall in the future.
“The price of storage per gigabyte is going to drop precipitously,” Mr. Lawrence said.
G.E. will first focus on selling the technology to commercial markets like movie studios, television networks, medical researchers and hospitals for holding data-intensive images like Hollywood films and brain scans. But selling to the broader corporate and consumer market is the larger goal.
To do that, G.E. will have to work with partners to license its holographic storage technology and expertise, and the company is already talking with major electronics and optical storage producers, said Bill Kernick, who leads G.E.’s technology sales unit. The holographic research was originally related to G.E.’s plastics business, which it sold two years ago to the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation for $11.6 billion.
Published: April 26, 2009
General Electric says it has achieved a breakthrough in digital storage technology that will allow standard-size discs to hold the equivalent of 100 DVDs.
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image
Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
Brian Lawrence leads G.E.’s holographic storage program.
The storage advance, which G.E. is announcing on Monday, is just a laboratory success at this stage. The new technology must be made to work in products that can be mass-produced at affordable prices.
But optical storage experts and industry analysts who were told of the development said it held the promise of being a big step forward in digital storage with a wide range of potential uses in commercial, scientific and consumer markets.
“This could be the next generation of low-cost storage,” said Richard Doherty, an analyst at Envisioneering, a technology research firm.
The promising work by the G.E. researchers is in the field of holographic storage. Holography is an optical process that stores not only three-dimensional images like the ones placed on many credit cards for security purposes, but the 1’s and 0’s of digital data as well.
The data is encoded in light patterns that are stored in light-sensitive material. The holograms act like microscopic mirrors that refract light patterns when a laser shines on them, and so each hologram’s recorded data can then be retrieved and deciphered.
Holographic storage has the potential to pack data far more densely than conventional optical technology, used in DVDs and the newer, high-capacity Blu-ray discs, in which information is stored as a pattern of laser-etched marks across the surface of a disc. The potential of holographic technology has long been known. The first research papers were published in the early 1960s.
Many advances have been made over the years in the materials science, optics and applied physics needed to make holographic storage a practical, cost-effective technology. And this year, InPhase Technologies, a spinoff of Bell Labs of Alcatel-Lucent, plans to introduce a holographic storage system, using $18,000 machines and expensive discs, for specialized markets like video production and storing medical images.
To date, holographic storage has not been on a path to mainstream use. The G.E. development, however, could be that pioneering step, according to analysts and experts. The G.E. researchers have used a different approach than past efforts. It relies on smaller, less complex holograms — a technique called microholographic storage.
A crucial challenge for the team, which has been working on this project since 2003, has been to find the materials and techniques so that smaller holograms reflect enough light for their data patterns to be detected and retrieved.
The recent breakthrough by the team, working at the G.E. lab in Niskayuna, N.Y., north of Albany, was a 200-fold increase in the reflective power of their holograms, putting them at the bottom range of light reflections readable by current Blu-ray machines.
“We’re in the ballpark,” said Brian Lawrence, the scientist who leads G.E.’s holographic storage program. “We’ve crossed the threshold so we’re readable.”
In G.E.’s approach, the holograms are scattered across a disc in a way that is similar to the formats used in today’s CDs, conventional DVDs and Blu-ray discs. So a player that could read microholographic storage discs could also read CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs. But holographic discs, with the technology G.E. has attained, could hold 500 gigabytes of data. Blu-ray is available in 25-gigabyte and 50-gigabyte discs, and a standard DVD holds 5 gigabytes.
“If this can really be done, then G.E.’s work promises to be a huge advantage in commercializing holographic storage technology,” said Bert Hesselink, a professor at Stanford and an expert in the field.
The G.E. team plans to present its research data and lab results at an optical data storage conference in Orlando next month.
Yet, analysts say, the feasibility of G.E.’s technology remains unproved and the economics uncertain. “It’s always well to remember that the most important technical specification in any storage device, however impressive the science behind it, is price,” said James N. Porter, an independent analyst of the storage market.
When Blu-ray was introduced in late 2006, a 25-gigabyte disc cost nearly $1 a gigabyte, though it is about half that now. G.E. expects that when they are introduced, perhaps in 2011 or 2012, holographic discs using its technology will be less than 10 cents a gigabyte — and fall in the future.
“The price of storage per gigabyte is going to drop precipitously,” Mr. Lawrence said.
G.E. will first focus on selling the technology to commercial markets like movie studios, television networks, medical researchers and hospitals for holding data-intensive images like Hollywood films and brain scans. But selling to the broader corporate and consumer market is the larger goal.
To do that, G.E. will have to work with partners to license its holographic storage technology and expertise, and the company is already talking with major electronics and optical storage producers, said Bill Kernick, who leads G.E.’s technology sales unit. The holographic research was originally related to G.E.’s plastics business, which it sold two years ago to the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation for $11.6 billion.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
17 Reasons Why Your Mac Runs Slower Than it Should
ChrisWrites dot com
by Chris on April 18, 2009
Day by day, bit by bit your Mac has got slower and slower. You don’t really notice because it has happened so gradually.
Until one day you have a chance to use another machine, that’s when you realize what your beloved Mac has become, as slow as an asthmatic ant carrying some heavy shopping.
Well all is not lost, while this list is unlikely to make you mac into a speed demon overnight, one of the following suggestions may just help.
Cluttered Desktop
Having too many files and folders on your desktop can slowdown your machine. Put these files into folders in your home directory and create aliases to them on the desktop.
Desktop
Corrupt Preference Files
Preference files can easily become corrupt and can make programs act weird or run slowly. If your Mac is slow using a particular application you can try deleting its preference file and relaunching he app (applications create a new file when they are relaunched if they can’t find an existing one). Its worth making a backup of the old file just i case you lose some settings that are hard to replicate.
preference .plist
Smart Playlists on iTunes
Smart playlists can make iTunes slower as they have to reload every time iTunes is launched. Disable live updating by going to File, Edit Smart Playlist and untick Live Updating.
Too Many Widgets on Dashboard
Each Widget on your Dashboard uses memory, again you can check the memory usage of your widgets by using the Activity Monitor. Remove any used or memory hogging widgets using the Dashboard control panel.
widgets
Caches, Log files and Temporary Items
It doesn’t hurt to regularly clear out built up Caches, Log files and Temporary Items an easy way to do this is to use an application like OnyX. If you prefer you can delete Caches manually, they can be found in Home/Library/Cache.
Wrong Firmware
Using the wrong Firmware can cause all sorts of problems, keeping your software up to date on a Mac is so easy there is really no excuse. Just click on Software Update in the Apple menu. You can also schedule your Mac to automatically check for updates, go to System Preferences and Software Update and tick Check for updates. You can change the frequency of the checks using the drop down menu.
Software Update
Not Enough RAM
Software can only take you so far. Upgrading your RAM will probably give you the biggest speed increase out of any of these tips. You can use the Activity Monitor application (under Utilities in the Application folder) to check if your Mac would benefit from more RAM. Click on System Memory tab and have a look at the pie chart at the bottom. If the chart is largely red or orange you are running out of RAM. Also take a look at the Page Ins and Outs numbers, if these are continually increasing, its time to upgrade your RAM.
Ram Upgrade
Permission Conflicts
Some issues with applications loading slowly or acting weird can be remedied by repairing permissions. All files in Mac Os X have a set of permissions, these determine which users or applications can have access to them. Sometimes permissions are incorrect and not what the operating system expects. To repair disk permissions you can use the Disk Utility app (in /Applications/Utilities). Select your startup disk and click th First Aid tab, then click the Repair Disk Permissions button.
Disk Utility
Hard Disk Is Nearly Full
Your Mac automatically utilizes free space on your Hard drive as Virtual Memory to free up the RAM. Try to make sure you have 10% free space available for this task.
Lots of Login Items
Removing unwanted or little used programs from your login items. To change your login items go to System Preferences then Accounts and click the Login Items tab.
open at login
Unused System Preference Panes
Clearing out unused preference panes can help free up memory and disk space, check under Other in System Preferences to see what you can remove. You can either disable it in its menu or delete it entirely by removing it from ~/Library/PreferencePanes.
Unused Applications Left Running
All running applications use up your memory and CPU resources, quit applications if you are not going to use them for a while. Some programs have memory leakage issues which means they tend to consume more and more memory the longer they are running (again you can spot these in the Activity Monitor) it a a good idea to quit and relaunch these every so often.
too many apps
Animated Wallpapers
Animated or slide show wallpaper can really impact the performance of your machine so its a good idea to turn this off.
Firefox Overloaded With Extensions
There are loads of awesome Firefox extensions so its easy to get carried away and add too many. Take a few moments to go through your Add-ons (open Firefox and go to tools then Add-ons) and uninstall any you no longer use.
add ons
Internet Settings
If you are finding your browser slow try clearing the cache and deleting your history. In Safari you do this by going to the main menu and clicking Reset Safari, tick Clear History and Empty the Cache then Reset. In Firefox go to Preferences, Privacy and click the Clear Now button.
Favicons in Safari or Firefox
You may see an improvement in your browsers performance by deleting your cached Favicons, for Safari just delete the files in /Library/Safari/Icons. If you use Firefox 3 read this useful tutorial on macosxhints.
Massive Mailboxes
If you have a massive mailbox with thousands of messages it’s going to take longer to load. Try to delete messages you no longer need and split larger mailboxes into folders.
by Chris on April 18, 2009
Day by day, bit by bit your Mac has got slower and slower. You don’t really notice because it has happened so gradually.
Until one day you have a chance to use another machine, that’s when you realize what your beloved Mac has become, as slow as an asthmatic ant carrying some heavy shopping.
Well all is not lost, while this list is unlikely to make you mac into a speed demon overnight, one of the following suggestions may just help.
Cluttered Desktop
Having too many files and folders on your desktop can slowdown your machine. Put these files into folders in your home directory and create aliases to them on the desktop.
Desktop
Corrupt Preference Files
Preference files can easily become corrupt and can make programs act weird or run slowly. If your Mac is slow using a particular application you can try deleting its preference file and relaunching he app (applications create a new file when they are relaunched if they can’t find an existing one). Its worth making a backup of the old file just i case you lose some settings that are hard to replicate.
preference .plist
Smart Playlists on iTunes
Smart playlists can make iTunes slower as they have to reload every time iTunes is launched. Disable live updating by going to File, Edit Smart Playlist and untick Live Updating.
Too Many Widgets on Dashboard
Each Widget on your Dashboard uses memory, again you can check the memory usage of your widgets by using the Activity Monitor. Remove any used or memory hogging widgets using the Dashboard control panel.
widgets
Caches, Log files and Temporary Items
It doesn’t hurt to regularly clear out built up Caches, Log files and Temporary Items an easy way to do this is to use an application like OnyX. If you prefer you can delete Caches manually, they can be found in Home/Library/Cache.
Wrong Firmware
Using the wrong Firmware can cause all sorts of problems, keeping your software up to date on a Mac is so easy there is really no excuse. Just click on Software Update in the Apple menu. You can also schedule your Mac to automatically check for updates, go to System Preferences and Software Update and tick Check for updates. You can change the frequency of the checks using the drop down menu.
Software Update
Not Enough RAM
Software can only take you so far. Upgrading your RAM will probably give you the biggest speed increase out of any of these tips. You can use the Activity Monitor application (under Utilities in the Application folder) to check if your Mac would benefit from more RAM. Click on System Memory tab and have a look at the pie chart at the bottom. If the chart is largely red or orange you are running out of RAM. Also take a look at the Page Ins and Outs numbers, if these are continually increasing, its time to upgrade your RAM.
Ram Upgrade
Permission Conflicts
Some issues with applications loading slowly or acting weird can be remedied by repairing permissions. All files in Mac Os X have a set of permissions, these determine which users or applications can have access to them. Sometimes permissions are incorrect and not what the operating system expects. To repair disk permissions you can use the Disk Utility app (in /Applications/Utilities). Select your startup disk and click th First Aid tab, then click the Repair Disk Permissions button.
Disk Utility
Hard Disk Is Nearly Full
Your Mac automatically utilizes free space on your Hard drive as Virtual Memory to free up the RAM. Try to make sure you have 10% free space available for this task.
Lots of Login Items
Removing unwanted or little used programs from your login items. To change your login items go to System Preferences then Accounts and click the Login Items tab.
open at login
Unused System Preference Panes
Clearing out unused preference panes can help free up memory and disk space, check under Other in System Preferences to see what you can remove. You can either disable it in its menu or delete it entirely by removing it from ~/Library/PreferencePanes.
Unused Applications Left Running
All running applications use up your memory and CPU resources, quit applications if you are not going to use them for a while. Some programs have memory leakage issues which means they tend to consume more and more memory the longer they are running (again you can spot these in the Activity Monitor) it a a good idea to quit and relaunch these every so often.
too many apps
Animated Wallpapers
Animated or slide show wallpaper can really impact the performance of your machine so its a good idea to turn this off.
Firefox Overloaded With Extensions
There are loads of awesome Firefox extensions so its easy to get carried away and add too many. Take a few moments to go through your Add-ons (open Firefox and go to tools then Add-ons) and uninstall any you no longer use.
add ons
Internet Settings
If you are finding your browser slow try clearing the cache and deleting your history. In Safari you do this by going to the main menu and clicking Reset Safari, tick Clear History and Empty the Cache then Reset. In Firefox go to Preferences, Privacy and click the Clear Now button.
Favicons in Safari or Firefox
You may see an improvement in your browsers performance by deleting your cached Favicons, for Safari just delete the files in /Library/Safari/Icons. If you use Firefox 3 read this useful tutorial on macosxhints.
Massive Mailboxes
If you have a massive mailbox with thousands of messages it’s going to take longer to load. Try to delete messages you no longer need and split larger mailboxes into folders.
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