Using WebPageTest to Test Your Website Performance

I just came across this website - WebPageTest.Org which I think is useful to test your website performance especially you're maintaining your own web server. Since I"m using Google blogspot, there are not much performance tweak I can play with. However, you can still see your overall webpage performance and look at the area where you can optimize for.

It is very simple. The first thing you need to do is to key in your website. After that, select the test location and finally just read the test report.  There is the quick start guide that you can go through but I think The more important part is interpreting the test result.

In summary, the webpage performance are categorized into the following categories:

• First Byte Time
• Keep-alive Enabled
• Compress Text
• Compress Images
• Cache static content
• CDN detectected

If  you get the green color or "A",  and look for the rating such as above "C" and "D" and check if there are anything that you can do to improve those rating.

For detail of how to interpret the result and what you can do to improve the rating, please refer to here..

P/S: Hope this is something useful to you especially you're the webmaster or hosting your own web server.

Best Battery Maintenance Tips for iPad and iPhone

Since the battery for iPad and iPhone is not replaceable, it is a good habit to make sure that your battery have the maximum lifespan. Here are the few tips that I always follow to make sure my iPad/iPhone has the maximum lifespan.


(1) Disable Location Services

One of the useless features in IOS is the location services. It is only enabled for the rest to track you down. The funny thing is some photo applications also use this service which I do not understand. Probably they just want to track you. The only useful application that needs this service is Google Map but you don't need it unless you want to locate your current position. Let's disable this is you really do not need such service.


(2) Turn Off Push Notifications

This is only useful if you use email or instance message for 24 hours and you want to get notified immediately for any new incoming email or new messages. If you are like me, just to check email once a while, you basically do not need such feature. Let's turn it off if you really do not need it because it consumes power.


(3)  Set Fetch Data Less Frequently

Your email can be set to fetch data at specific internals. As I mentioned above, I prefer to check my email manually. So what you need to do is go to "Settings->Mail, Contacts, Calender->Fetch New Data" and set it to "Manually".Again, you do not need such feature unless you're really an active user of email or you can set it to hourly to save your battery life if really need to.


(4) Turn off Bluetooth, Wifi, and 3G

If you rarely use Bluetooth, wifi or 3G, you should just turn it off. I often use the "Airplane Mode" if needed to disable all these at once.


(5) Reduce Brightness to < 1 Quarter

The brightness of the screen consumes a lot of power. Unless you're really under a sun light and in most of the cases, you can reduce your iPad or iPhone brightness level less than 1 quarter. You can also turning on the "Auto  Brightness" as well.


(6) Turn Off Equalizer Setting

Another useless feature, please turn it off. :) You can set it here in case you do not know: "Setting->iPod->EQ"


(7) Charge Your iPad/iPhone Regularly

iPad or iPhone uses lithium based battery where you need to charge it regularly to keep the electrons inside the battery moving. At least you "MUST" discharge and charge at least once per month. .Please discharge it to less than 20% and then charge it to full (i.e. 100%).


Hope this battery maintenance tips are useful for you and I think this should be the complete one. Please feel free to share with me if you have any other signficant tips to increase the battery lifespan.