If you use a VPN (Virtual Private Network), this tip is for you.

The Problem

• you connect to a VPN to get access to your work/whatever network
• your connection is fast but the VPN connection is balls slow
• you try to stream a bit of online radio, go to a website, watch a video, or do anything, which is automatically routed through the VPN connection but everything TAKES AGES because the VPN connection is the limiting factor
• so not only are you frustrated by hiccupping radio, stuttering video, and a never disappearing progress bar but you're also making your already slow link slower, so now remote desktop and other activity for which you've VPN'ed in the first place is taking even longer

Familiar situation? You bet.

The Solution

This solution is for Windows users only but I'm sure similar settings are available in MacOS, Linux, etc.

Here in particular I am using Windows 7 but this solution applies to Windows XP and Vista as well (the menus look only slightly different for those).

1. Open up the VPN Connection's Properties

These properties can be reached by right clicking on the VPN connection in the list of networks and selecting Properties.

2. Go to the TCP Properties

On Windows XP, you might see only the "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)", while on Windows 7 you will see both IPv4 and IPv6. You will most likely need to select IPv4 then.

3. Head to the Advanced settings

4. Uncheck the "Use default gateway on remote network" checkbox

5. Restart the VPN connection

This should do the trick.

The New Behavior

The new behavior from what I can tell is:

• use a local connection, such as your WiFi or wired connection, so your radio, streaming video, websites, etc should now bypass the VPN connection
• if the request above fails, Windows should only then fall back on the VPN connection

When Not To Use This Tweak

Do not use this tweak if you rely on the VPN to always encrypt all your network traffic.

Temporarily disable this tweak if normally you are OK with not encrypting all of your traffic but are currently using an unsecure network. Examples include a WiFi connection that does not prompt for a password or a public network, such as an Internet cafe.

Enjoy your faster VPN experience!

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Introduction

The tricks I am going to describe allow you to create unique gmail addresses that still hit your existing gmail inbox, without actually making new gmail accounts.

This can be useful in a variety of situations when you need to use multiple email addresses without having the pain of maintaining them, such as

• using unique emails while registering for the same service more than once (say, paypal)
• giving out a unique email address to see if you start getting spam to it later – that way you know exactly who to blame for it
• more generally, easily create email rules to sort incoming emails into folders, delete them, mark as important, etc.

The hints are not new by any means but it seems like most gmail users are not aware of them. So, without further ado:

Gmail Ignores Dots In Gmail Addresses

Did you know this? I sure didn't, until today, when I read a blog post by a fellow Russian blogger streetmakarov. Apparently, gmail completely ignores dots, so you can insert them anywhere you want in your email address.

Thus, foo.bar@gmail.com is the same as foobar@gmail.com, which is the same as f.o.o.b.a.r@gmail.com, etc – they will all arrive in the same inbox.

This begs the question – what if I registered foo.bar@gmail.com while someone else already owns foobar@gmail.com? Well, some digg and arstechnica users got their panties in a bunch over this a while ago, just to realize that gmail doesn't allow registering accounts that would clash in any way – so if I already own foobar@gmail.com, nobody can register foo.bar@gmail.com or any other combination.

You Can Append a "+ANYTHINGYOUWANT" To Your Username

I think this trick is even more awesome and flexible than the previous one. If your email is foobar@gmail.com, then you can use foobar+blabla@gmail.com, foobar+monkeybananas@gmail.com, etc and those will still land in your original inbox.

This makes it even easier to track the addresses you give out. For example, when I register new twitter accounts, I enter my email as myrealemail+mynewtwittername@gmail.com and then set up a filter in Outlook to filter those out to a separate folder. Simple, painless, and effective.

The only downside to this method is some sites foolishly (or purposely) disallow plus signs in email addresses. Oh well, you can use trick #1 for those.

Conclusion

Do you know other tricks related to "uniquefying" your gmail address? Feel free to share in the comments.

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Introduction

Whether you are a web developer or a self-hosting business owner, the only excuse for not activating compression capabilities of your web server can be that you didn't know about it. And now that you are reading this, there is no excuse left at all.

Here is how big a single page of this blog was before compression was enabled on CSS and Javascript files (computed by YSlow):

And here it is after compression:

As you see, the difference is quite substantial – almost 30% savings.

Compressing your HTML, XML, Javascript, CSS, etc pages will mean less data transferred between the server and the client which:

• reduces the bandwidth usage.
• provides faster page rendering which in turn leads to less user frustration, higher conversion rates, lower bounce rate, etc etc etc.

Compression is especially important for users with slow connections as every kilobyte of your code is that much more painful to them.

Compression can be very effective – you can easily shrink your text, code (HTML, XML, Javascript, CSS, etc) to 10% of the original size (of course, your mileage may vary). 100KB page that needs only 10KB to transfer? Sign me up!

So, before I talk about the solution, let me describe what exactly happens when compression is turned on and how it affects older browsers that don't support it.

Compression Mechanism Explained

In order for compression to work in the first place, the web server (Apache in my example) needs to support it. This is achieved by enabling one of Apache modules called mod_deflate. The server will then be able to compress the data to the DEFLATE standard using either the zlib (also known as deflate) or gzip implementations. Yeah, DEFLATE is both the standard the one of its implementations, for those confused. I know I was. This is best described in this Wikipedia article.

The following mechanism is used:

• the server with a compression extension enabled is able to serve either compressed (smaller) or uncompressed (larger) pages, depending on what the client supports.
• the client (that is, your browser) sends a special header called "Accept-Encoding" listing the DEFLATE implementations it's capable of decompressing. For example "gzip,deflate".
• the server picks the best compression supported by the client (if any), compresses the files, and sends them over to the client.
• the client receives the compressed files and decompresses them.

Are Your Pages Already Compressed? Test Them!

If you are not sure whether you are already serving compressed pages or not, test them! My favorite way is by using Charles HTTP Debugger. Another option is by downloading Firebug for Firefox and installing Yahoo's YSlow or Google's Page Speed. Just look at the response headers to see if compression is on (look for the Content-Encoding header). Here are some before and after examples:

Theme CSS

Before:

After:

jQuery

Before:

After:

Solution

Create a .htaccess file in the top directory of your site with the following contents:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

# DEFLATE by type - html, text, css, xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/css text/xml
 
# DEFLATE by type - javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript application/javascript text/javascript text/x-js text/x-javascript
 
# DEFLATE by extension
AddOutputFilter DEFLATE js css htm html xml

Alternatively, you could put these lines into your Apache config within the Directory directive.

The AddOutputFilterByType directive adds DEFLATE filters to certain MIME types. I tried to assemble some of the common ones but feel free to add more, as each server may be configured differently and give out MIME types different from mine.

The AddOutputFilter directive binds the DEFLATE filter to specific file extensions, just in case they are not served with a proper MIME type. Feel free to add to this list as well.

Caveats

1. In order to use this whole compression/deflate/gzip business, your Apache server must first have mod_deflate enabled. Without it, you will get the HTTP 500 error (Internal Server error). You can check which mods you already have enabled by checking with the output of phpinfo() function.

In order to enable mod_deflate, uncomment the line with "deflate_module" in your Apache config file. The location of this config file is highly dependant on your system. Some examples include

• /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
• /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
• c:\wamp\bin\apache\Apache2.2.11\conf\httpd.conf
• some other place where your system stores Apache config files (read the special note below for OpenSUSE).

Here's what you should have:

LoadModule deflate_module modules/mod_deflate.so

On OpenSUSE, you actually enable modules a bit differently. Go to /etc/sysconfig/apache2 and look for APACHE_MODULES=. Then add "deflate" to the list, if it's not already there.

Now, restart Apache and check the output of phpinfo() again.

2. Adding AddOutputFilter and AddOutputFilterByType to .htaccess requires such overrides to be authorized by the main Apache configuration for that directory, otherwise it will return error 500 as well. The option you are looking for is called "AllowOverride" and mine was set to "AllowOverride AuthConfig" which wasn't enough. Changing it to

AllowOverride AuthConfig FileInfo

or just

AllowOverride All

fixes the problem. You can find more info about AllowOverride here.

3. In WordPress, if you are using Google Gears (Turbo mode) for caching some core WordPress files, they will not show up compressed. That is because they're not served by the remote server but rather reside locally (think of it as permanent cache). I was very confused at first when I didn't see jQuery.js in the HTTP log and YSlow reported it uncompressed.

Are you a WordPress user?

If you are a WordPress user, don't assume WordPress is going to automatically compress your pages. In fact, as you install more and more plugins, the payload becomes larger and larger with those additional CSS and Javascript files.

You owe it to yourself and to your users to immediately enable compression on your blog.

Here is what happened after I enabled compression on this blog.

Before:

After:

Bonus – WP Minify

For even better results, I suggest you have a look at my good friend and talented WordPress master Thaya's plugin called WP Minify. It preprocesses and aggregates all or most of your CSS and Javascript into just 2 files, thus saving on the number of HTTP requests. It also minifies content to achieve smaller size.

My blog before WP Minify:

After WP Minify:

That's all folks. Let me know if something was unclear and I'll be glad to clarify it.

A few references that pointed me in the right direction and allowed me to provide a more complete solution:

• http://brightscape.net/compress-jquery-even-further/
• http://brightscape.net/compress-your-web-pages-with-mod_deflate/

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That's a 3 mbit per second upload = 375 KB/s. Wow, Comcast, just wow. I know there are many people having complaints about service but after being a customer for 8 years, I really am happy with everything. Blows the puny DSL away.

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