There are 2 main browsers (the software used to view websites) on the market, Microsoft's IE and Firefox. Many people have switched to Firefox (market share is now about 48%) over the last few years for many reasons, the main ones being -

• Overall it's far better than IE, and
• The ability to install Add-ons

An Add-on, often called a browser extension, is a small program that attaches itself to the Firefox browser and makes it more dynamic and useful. Some of the more popular ones are -

• Xmarks - if using 2 or more computers (home and work for example) this automatically synchronises your Bookmarks
• Videodownloadhelper - Allows you to download video from a website (whether the website allows you to or not)
• Adblock plus - if you don't like seeing adverts on websites, this blocks them out
• Twitterfox - Notifies you of your friends' status on Twitter
• WOT - warns of scam and fake websites

Add-ons are simple to install, just click a link and the software installs itself.

• Full list of Firefox Add-ons

To open a website in a new tab, right click on the link and select 'open link in new tab'

A good example of using tabs would be when looking at a message board. Go through the threads and open in a new tab anything that's of interest. Or perhaps you want to buy a few books on Amazon so scan what might be of interest, open a new tab for each book and when finished read each tab in more detail.

Ultimately Tabs help cut down the amount of forward/backward clicking.

Note that Tabs were first introduced by Firefox but now Microsoft's IE has them as well. However, I and many like me think that IE is a far inferior product.

This tip is not related to using a computer efficiently, rather it's about keeping safe from the online scammers and specifically the boiler room con artists.

Sadly there are many scams on the internet so we always have to be vigilant. One common scam are the boiler rooms who cold call offering the ability to easily make massive profits. Normally they've got a hot IPO on offer that's about to triple in price or are pushing commodity or currency options etc.

Sadly, many fall for their bait, invest before realising they've been sold worthless shares/investments and their cash stolen. But the internet in these situations is an invaluable tool when used for research. One of the problems the scammers have is their websites, and specifically -

• When the domain was first registered, and
• How many people link to the domain

If you look at the average scammers website it will normally claim the company has been in business for many years. However, chances are the domain name will have been first registered within the last year, 2 years maximum. And if so there's a 99% chance the people calling are thieves. To check out when a domain was first registered type the name into this link -

• http://whois.domaintools.com/

Also, most of the scam websites will proudly boast they've got 100s if not 1000s of clients, both retail and institutional. But when you look to see how many other websites are linking to them it's mostly zero and that's not likely for any established business.

Use this Google command to check out if the site has any links and if so who the sites are, ie are they proper companies/news sites or suspect sites like cheap press release site where anyone can get links from -