CompuWorld

I Left Google Blogger!

2007-09-05T00:55:00.001+05:30

Here goes one more name added into the list of wordpress users who initially started there journey into blogging from blogger. I was blogging at webtechlog.blogspot.com (now at www.NOFULLSTOP.com) since January 1, 2007 and my blog had gained good fame. With around 100 subscribers and daily 200+ hits from Google search and other regular visitors the blog was receiving good response.

But that touch, that difference was always missing. It wasn’t mine after all. Neither the domain was mine. So after rejection of over 100 domains here I am ready to start the journey after a halt of almost a month. I agree that I didn’t blog for last 1 month but my readers can trust me that they are going to receive some really good content in the coming days. I have already prepared it.

I have registered my blog into technorati and done all the necessary steps to retain my readers in feedburner and Google juice. Lets see how many days it takes to regain the old name and more ofcourse but yeah one thing is for sure. I am feeling better now. More like a real blogger!

Note: I have taken necessary steps and I am sure you wont have to change to my new feed URL in case you are a old subscriber. All should work fine. But if it dosent than please do contact me.

Meet A Huge New World Of Bloggers And Get Paid For That

2007-08-11T14:19:00.000+05:30

Who would not like to be in that list?

I had heard a lot about PayPerPost (PPP) blog advertising but somehow signed up for it now. I know I am late, but it is better late than never. I have seen this list being continuously updated and yeah, I dream to be into it someday.

PPP is an awesome webportal which lets bloggers write reviews for which they are paid for. They can also have a badge installed in every post of there blog so that there readers can review there posts and get paid. The blogger in turn gets paid for referring the reader. This is a well established referral program where you have to do some writing too ;)

Something very important which PPP taught me is that I need to have my own domain. There are so many awesome paying opportunities available but I do not qualify for them just because I use blogger and not my own domain.

Now my plan is to earn some money very quick so that I can get my own domain. I am sure this will help me get more readers. Go Sign In and start earning!

Windows Vista SP1 Screenshots Leaked - MS Won't Confirm Yet, As Expected!

2007-08-08T02:59:00.000+05:30

Microsoft says that the first public release of Vista SP1 will be out by the end of 2007 but won't confirm the status of SP1. Now they do not need to! Microsoft has shipped SP1 to a select pool of testers and that is confirmed by the secret images release by winbeta.

According to the information that can be extracted from the screenshots, Vista SP1 is now at build 6001.16549. In the About Windows image for example the version of the operating system is 6.0, however, the build is 6001 and Service pack 1 is reverenced with v.165. Additional information about the first beta builds of Vista SP1 reveal the fact that Microsoft is not releasing the refresh as an update but as an ISO image. In July Microsoft served SP1 ISO files weighing in at 3.07GB for Vista 32-bit edition and 4.3GB for Vista 64-Bit edition. Vista SP1 beta was delivered in both 6,000 RTM and 6,001 Windows Server 2008 kernel versions.

Still the Microsoft and beta participants are denying the program's existence, as expected. We'll have to suffer with our malfunctioning Windows Vista installs for just a tad longer.

[please click on the images to enlarge them]

Earn "6 Times" More With Your AdSense Very Easily

2007-08-07T12:02:00.000+05:30

Many might have said this and many of you are using this trick too, but for those who still did not gave it a try and think that Google AdSense does not pay well, read on and DO TRY IT!

The publishers bid in Google AdWords to get to the top in your blog pages where Ad Units are displayed. The theory is simple. The one who pays out more has more chances to be displayed at the top in the pages running ads. So the first Ad unit in your blog page will display the advertisers which pay the highest for clicks, the second Ad unit pays out lesser than the first and so on.

So what I want to suggest you here is to "use only one ad unit" in your blog page. Yes! I used to have two ad units in my pages. One below the header (728x15) and other below the heading of the article (300x200). Now all the Ads which were relevant to the article I published were displayed in the 728x15 Ad unit and other Ad units would publish non-relevant Ads. I removed the 728x15 Ad unit and "for the same number of clicks and visits" my AdSense earnings were raised by 6 times than the initial earnings!

So do this experiment right away. Use just one Ad unit in your page and I can assure you that you will be payed more for clicks than what you are being payed.

And if you are not using AdSense then do me a favor and click on the referral link below this article and register for AdSense and start earning dollars.

More:
Win A 125x125 Ad Spot For FREE
Top 10 Ways To Improve Your Google PageRank
Check PR, BackLinks, Alexa Rank And Much More In One Shot
Awesome Hidden Google Pages
Search Google "Without Ads"

Qualtiy Cartridges With Prices Cheaper Than Your Favorite Brands

2007-08-07T00:54:00.000+05:30

Ever wondered why your "branded" printers ink cartridge costs so much? The policy is simple. Big names in this industry sell printers at cheap rates and then go on to earn there profits from selling the accessories without which the customer wont be able to move on. The cost of branded cartridges is said to cost more per ounce than some high quality champagnes. They are sometimes even costlier than imported Russian caviar!

The first and foremost target of such printer developing companies is to sell printers to consumers after huge amount of luring advertisements and then force them to drain out there pockets to costly ink cartridges. These were the reasons which made the consumers drift to third party ink cartridges and hence led to birth of huge number of third-party franchisees selling ink cartridges with rates cut down by about 75%!

InkShop.co.uk is one of those similar third party providers who trust the "word of mouth" method of advertisements instead of spending heavily on celebrities endorsing items for them. InkShop boasts of a huge stock of printer cartridges and ink cartridges under there belt. And when I happened to visit there web portal there promises seemed to have lived up to my expectations but still I do have few words of caution for them else another good company may not make it to the charts just because it did not follow some set rules.

The best way for a consumer is to do the testing themselves. So I would request the readers to try using a third-party cartridge and know it himself that they provide you with same look and feel with reduced price. Just the brand name is missing. Even almost every friend of mine now uses non-branded cartridges for there branded printers. That is the way to go!

InkShop.co.uk provided you with a easy looking homepage which is soothing to the eyes. The moment you click on your favorite printer maker's name you are send to the page which has almost all the printers listed and yes they do have cartridges in stock for every printer! That is awesome hardwork. The search feature makes your job of finding your favorite printer a much easier job. In short they have it all in one place in this portal InkShop.co.uk. But lets point out on some of the features which they overlooked!

They should publish some reviews or comments from knows people in there website so that visitors come to know that yes they are popular. Yes you have a testimonials link but how about having big newspapers or famous websites mentions being printed there?
The "Printing Tips" articles which appear at the bottom of the page in a small scrolling window needs a mention at the top of the home page!
Articles like changing inkjet cartridges could contain few images depicting the procedure.
The photo paper tab is empty so should not be visible in the homepage.
Could mention the number of orders successfully completed until now.
Start your blog right now! Blog is a great way to keep in touch with your customers and know there views.
And hey how about trying to include printers too in your website as items? A try might show you the results!

Overall the web based company is nice start-up to offer you ink cartridges, at market prices, at your doorstep and that too with free delivery if you are in UK. What it now needs is buzz and that will come if it goes on to spend some money a lot more hard work. I would request my readers to please have a look at InkShop.co.uk and there visit might well take them into the cheaper world of cartridges and that too online!

xxxdisc.net is Google's Look Like By All Means

2007-08-06T15:37:00.000+05:30

Tired searching for your search queries in Google.com? No I wont ask you to start using another search engine, just use another domain "XXXDISC.NET". SearchEngineJournal has a mention of this website xxxdisc.net which takes you to the Google homepage and you can easily do the normal searches as you perform in Google.

The search results are same and the page also looks to be almost same. The author doest not seems to run any malicious script with this page. It just seems that he used some tricky programming to get data out of Google pages and let users do Google search from his website until he actually comes up with real content for the site. And you can understand what the real content will be with that name xxxdisc.net! Even the same Google Ads are being displayed in this website as displayed in Google.com.

The only thing which makes me curious is how come Google left a hole that anyone can easily create mirrors of there search engine in any domain. I would love to hear the explanations.

More:
Is Google X Being Retested

Hidden Google Pages - Awesome
10 Google Myths
BREAKING NEWS - Internet Crashes

Mac Games And "A Lot" More Is A Must Stop For Apple Fans

2007-08-05T13:30:00.000+05:30

There are many websites related to Apple stuff but very few of them concentrate on content. Mostly all are busy gathering lots of viewers so as to get many ad clicks. And how they do that? By daily delivering new content even when that content should not have been on the top. Mac Games also focuses on same Mac/Apple stuff but its one of those few rare sites who let there content stay there on the homepage for 1 full week!

The homepage design is soothing to the eyes and it blends the Google Ads very well too. I want to point on blending of Google Ads in this site as there are many sites which have so many ads up there in there pages that one rarely goes on to read the content.

Mac Games And More mostly concentrates on Mac games and the shareware related to Mac. It is doing an awesome job of providing all the Mac shareware developers with a platform where they can feature there hard work. One such example is Mac solitaire.

Still few suggestions which I have for the author is to remove Google Ads from the about page, the contact page and the FAQ page. And do get a good contact form which helps you not to reveal your email address.

Go explore the archives of MacGamesAndMore and if you want you can easily be featured on the home page for one full weak! The site has all the potential to be a big hit and must continue working hard and hence will surely get success. After all hard work is the key to success!

Buy iPhone For "99 cents" On August 9th 2007 At 99Only Stores

2007-08-04T15:48:00.000+05:30

99¢ Only Stores®, located in Westchester CA, plans to give out Apple iPhones for just 99 cents to there first 9 customers on 9th August as part of there 25th anniversary.

With this awesome iPhone give away comes an issue too. As iPhone's retail exclusivity is with Apple and AT&T Wireless stores, how on earth will this plan be executed?

And if this turns out to be a success then one should expect more such iPhone give aways at other places, not only at Apple and AT&T Wireless stores!

What do you think? Has 99Only stores done there homework or they should be ready to face fights against Apple?

More:
Do You Know How Is 'X' In 'Mac OS X' Pronounced?
Mac OS X vs Windows Vista - The Battle Continues
Tech Support For Apple, Dell, GateWay and HP To Improve With Your Help
Mac OS X And Linux Bite Dust - Vista Did It!

Technorati Tags: iPhone, iPhone for 99cent, 99only store

Your Site 'Listed On Top' In Google Search Results - Guaranteed

2007-08-04T03:50:00.000+05:30

Mike Grehan spotted a unique feature at Google where you can suggest Google of a better search result than what you received and the next time you search for same query you will get that link on top of search page (for you only of course) with a * marked to it.

Click on the image to see the experiment in action. SearchEngineLand has a reply from Google related to this stuff. It says that Google keeps testing new and innovative experiments daily and this one was no different. See the official Google blog post here.

Now I understand why I could not see the experiment in action. Looks like they brought it down with the same speed as they activated it!

More:
Top 10 Ways To Improve Your Google PageRank
Hidden Google Pages - Awesome
Awesome Google Search Commands To Download FREE Stuff
10 Google Myths

Technorati Tags: google

This Article Is Sponsored By YOU!

2007-08-04T03:05:00.000+05:30

[click on image to enlarge]

Bringing out this unique style of advertisement, CompuWorld gives you the chance to become the sponsor of all the articles to be published for one full month! The Ad Spot being offered is the "smallest" in size but the "most eye catchy" too. Its unique and it is different from the rest! (And yes it is colored red) Here goes the details.

How it works:
When you make a payment of $5/month then I will leave a link (anchor text of your choice) to your website/blog below the headings of all the posts to published on CompuWorld for next one month.

Benefits:

As your site link appears below "each heading" so every time a user visits CompuWorld he/she is desirable to see your link even before reading the article. That makes it probable that he/she might be interested to know this unique sponsor and will click on the link!
CompuWorld is a PR 3 blog and is updated daily with around 200+ daily unique visitors. And around 100+ visitors from Google search.
1 month = 30 articles (avg.) With 200+ visitors your link gets listed in the most "eye catchy spot" (as it is red in color) for around 6000 times a month. You do the math for how many clicks you will earn from this innovative ad spot.
And all this just for $5/month!

Interesting? Contact me or leave a comment on this article.

Destiny Drives The World, Try Driving Destiny!!

Beware: Malware Will Delete All Your MP3 Collection!

2007-08-03T18:05:00.000+05:30

Hackers who created this malware must have been very nasty else why would someone spend nights in order to create a malware which goes on to delete the computers mp3 files. Yes that is true!

A recent article on computerworld suggests that the creators of this malware are more likely to be teenage mischief-makers than the organized criminal gangs we typically see authoring financially motivated malware these days.

Symantec Corp., which calls the worm W32.Deletemusic, said in an advisory that the worm copies itself to all drives on a PC. It also creates an autorun file to start itself whenever a user accesses a drive.

The worm affects PCs running Windows 2000, 95, 98, Me, NT, Server 2003, XP and Vista, Symantec said. To block potential problems users could disable the autorun feature in Windows that automatically launches programs on CDs or USB drives.

Users could also exercise caution by holding down the SHIFT for a few seconds in order to deactivate the Autorun function when they plug in USB sticks or other removable media to their computers or when they insert a disk. Users should also make regular backups for their critical data by burning DVDs or using automated backup tools.

More:
Making of MP3
Must Read Hacking Tips To Be Safe
Use Google Video To Hack Password
YouTube Could Be Used To Hack Computer

Technorati Tags: Deletemp3, malware, worm

All That Glitters Is Sometimes Gold Too. - Dropheads Review

2007-08-03T01:53:00.000+05:30

Pros:

Good for puzzle lovers, problem solvers.
Provides the old "falling colored coins (instead of heads) game" a new look and feel.
Includes a very helping tutorial.
Going gets tough as you move on so couldn't be marked as easy!
Kids, specially those who hated tetris like games, because of its looks, should love the interface.

Cons:

Will no way attract the die hard mission lover game fans. (And unfortunately that is where the actual gaming profits lie)
No other negative point. A perfect time pass!

Review:
Are you a mission solver? Do you love to rip of the enemy tanks, and get the juice out of the battle fields? Then this is not the game you should download (but the 1 hour demo version is worth a download for everyone). Now for all those puzzle solvers, this is the game to look at. It sharpens your brain and give you the same old stuff packed with all the new glitters to keep you intact.
Dropheads is similar to a game I used to play years back where you are provided with colored coins and x*x matrix and you are required to arrange them in group of four or more. The only drawback which that game used to have was its theme. It failed to attract kids as it had no "instant" fun involved. But with all the colors and soothing music, dropheads is the game to look after. It keeps you eyes glued to the funny falling faces, your mouse running, brain thinking the next move, plus the ears listening to the soothing music.

Dropheads provides you with 2 modes of play. Arcade mode is for the quick thinkers. And the strategy mode gives you the time to think, to feel, to get involved!

The amazing tutorial provides you with every help you could think of one would need and also provides you the option to turn of the tutorial and play the game right away. It installs with just few clicks but does take some time (might be even 3 minutes in some machines, it took 20 seconds in mine!) to start. But the wait is worth it, as the interface you get to see is very loving for the kids and the puzzle solvers. Here I do count kids and puzzle lovers together as the game is made for both kind of audiences. The glitters to keep the kids intact and the task to make quick new move keeps the puzzle lovers intact.
The sudden bonuses bring the game back to life just when you start feeling that you will be greeted with the "Game Over" banner soon!
Conclusion:
Overall the game is worth the money and has all the ingredients for a complete timepass. A must see for tetris, colored coin falling game, and puzzle lovers. And it could turn out to be a good game for those parents who want there kids to play games to sharpen his/her brain and not to get indulged in the shooting games which could make him/her violent.

But NOT for those who love violence. And fortunately they would never understand the reasons why others love such games.

Download the game here!

Another Template To Enhance Reading CompuWorld

2007-08-03T01:11:00.001+05:30

Reviews do help you. An so did the review of The King Speaks for my blog as part of entry into the blogging contest. I am thank full of him that he bashed me up well in that review and here you see the result. I hope this template won't result in problems for the reader and if it does then I would request you to please contact me or leave a comment. I would love to hear more truthful bashing which will improve my blog.

Just to pass on a note that even after the new enhanced template being implemented the contest to win 125x125 ad spot continuous. Best of luck!

Do subscribe to our Full RSS Feeds for flash updates!

CompuWorld

2007-08-02T16:03:00.000+05:30

CompuWorld offers unique content daily which will always be helpful to any user who uses Internet. But sometimes daily visiting the website can be headache. I understand that and so here I offer you with various ways you can use to be daily updated without having to visit CompuWorld.

Get daily updates in your inbox. (Not more than one email per day!)

Use our RSS feeds link to subscribe to feeds in your favorite feed reader.

Subscribe To Our RSS Feeds For Daily Flash Updates!

Or else use the buttons below to directly sign in into your favorite feed reader and subscribe there in.

Contact Me

2007-08-02T15:38:00.000+05:30

Use the form below to contact me. Please do not spam. I hate that!

Must See SEO Jargons

2007-08-02T06:06:00.000+05:30

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is buzz word for anyone who has its own blog/website. And while searching SEO related content online one tends get stumbled upon words which you hear for the first time sometimes! SEOmoz recently published a huge list of many such SEO jargon which you will read every now and then. I read through the list and compiled some of the few very interesting, and unheard ones, which you must read if you plan NOT to read through the complete list.

alt text A description of a graphic (within the img tag), which usually isn’t displayed to the end user, unless the graphic is undeliverable, or a browser is used that doesn’t display graphics. Alt text is important because search engines can’t tell one picture from another. Alt text is the one place where it is acceptable for the spider to get different content than the human user, but only because the alt text is accessible to the user, and when properly used is an accurate description of the associated picture. Special web browsers for visually challenged people rely on the alt text to make the content of graphics accessible to the users.
anchor text The user visible text of a link. Search engines use anchor text to indicate the relevancy of the referring site and of the link to the content on the landing page. Ideally all three will share some keywords in common.
astroturfing (the opposite of full disclosure) attempting to advance a commercial or political agenda while pretending to be an impartial grassroots participant in a social group. Participating in a user forum with the secret purpose of branding, customer recruitment, or public relations.
bread crumbs Web site navigation in a horizontal bar above the main content which helps the user to understand where they are on the site and how to get back to the root areas.
cloak The practice of delivering different content to the search engine spider than that seen by the human users. This Black Hat tactic is frowned upon by the search engines and caries a virtual death penalty of the site/domain being banned from the search engine results.
doorway (gateway) A web page that is designed specifically to attract traffic from a search engine. A doorway page which redirects users (but not spiders) to another site or page is implementing cloaking.
gizmo (gadget, widget) small applications used on web pages to provide specific functions such as a hit counter or IP address display. Gizmos can make good link bait.
Google bomb The combined effort of multiple webmasters to change the Google search results usually for humorous effect. The keywords “miserable failure” - George Bush, and “greatest living American” - Steven Colbert Google bombs are famous examples.
Google bowling Maliciously trying to lower a sites rank by sending it links from the “bad neighborhood” - Kind of like yelling “Good luck with that infection!” to your buddy as you get off the school bus - there is some controversy as to if this works or is just an SEO urban myth.
keyword cannibalization The excessive reuse of the same keyword on too many web pages within the same site. This practice makes it difficult for the users and the search engines to determine which page is most relevant for the keyword.
link condom Any of several methods used to avoid passing link love to another page, or to avoid possible detrimental results of endorsing a bad site by way of an outgoing link, or to discourage link spam in user generated content.
inkerati Internet users who are the most productive targets of linkbait. The Linkerati includes - social taggers, forum posters, resource maintainers, bloggers and other content creators, etc - who are most likely to create incoming links or link generating traffic (in the case of social networkers).
mashup A web page which consists primarily of single purpose software and other small programs (gizmos and gadgets) or possibly links to such programs. Mashups are quick and easy content to produce and are often popular with users, and can make good link bait. Tool collection pages are sometimes mashups.
organic link organic links are those that are published only because the webmaster considers them to add value for users.
sandbox There has been debate and speculation that Google puts all new sites into a “sandbox,” preventing them from ranking well for anything until a set period of time has passed. The existence or exact behavior of the sandbox is not universally accepted among SEOs.
sock puppet an online identity used to either hide a persons real identity or to establish multiple user profiles.
stickiness Mitigation of bounce rate. Website changes that entice users to stay on the site longer, and view more pages improve the sites “stickiness”.
toolbar pagerank (PR) a value between 0 and 10 assigned by the Google algorithm, which quantifies page importance and is not the same as pagerank. Toolbar Pagerank is only updated a few times a year, and is not a reliable indicator of current status.
walled garden a group of pages which link to each other, but are not linked to by any other pages. A walled garden can still be indexed if it is included in a sitemap, but it will probably have very low pagerank.

This was a summary of jargon which you might face while working to improve your search engine ranking. To see the complete list go to SEOmoz.

More:
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Life Cycle Of A Blog Post
17 Firefox Extensions For Bloggers
Fantastic FREEBIES

Technorati Tags: seo jargons

Digg Or Stumble A Story And Earn Dollars

2007-08-01T06:02:00.000+05:30

Adding another link to my "Money Makers List" in the third column is Subvert and Profit which gives you 0.5$ for each digg or "thumbs up" you do for a story.

The sign up is very easy.

You enter your email address and they will send you a confirmatory email.
Click on the link in the email, and then enter your name, user name and password.
Now they will provide you with a test story to digg and a test page to stumble (thumbs up).
Later a email will be sent to you confirming your user accounts in digg and stumble upon respectively!

Now your job is to wait for stories to come and once you have them, go and digg them or stumble them. You earn 0.5$ for each vote.

But a request is to please read the stories before you vote for them. Be honest!

More:
Top 10 Ways To Improve Your Google PageRank
Exchange Your "NOT IN USE" DVDs, CDs, Video Games And Books In Return For The Ones You Will Love To Owe

Technorati Tags: earn money

The Conscience of a Hacker

2007-07-31T06:52:00.000+05:30

I read this last year somewhere in orkut.com and did publish it in my old blog (no more in use). Today I read it in Google Blogoscoped and so here it is for those who haven't read it till date. A MUST READ for anyone who knows English and has even very little knowledge about hackers. The Conscience of a Hacker, also called the Hacker Manifesto, was published in 1986. Loyd Blankenship aka The Mentor wrote it after his arrest and it got picked up by Phrack, and achieved fame since then. (Text republished here courtesy of Phrack.)

Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager
Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...
Damn kids. They're all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain,
ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what
made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world...
Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of
the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...
Damn underachiever. They're all alike.

I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain
for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms.
Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is
cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I
screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...
Or feels threatened by me...
Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.

And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through
the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is
sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is
found.
"This is it... this is where I belong..."
I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to
them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...

You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at
school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or
ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the
beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying
for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and
you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek
after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color,
without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us
and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is
that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.
My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me
for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual,
but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

More:
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Want To Type Fast? See This
IITk Website Hacked (Images)
Awesome Microsoft Ad For MS Outlook 2007 Customers

Technorati Tags: hacker manifesto

Cell Phone Advertising - The Next Buzz Word

2007-07-30T06:54:00.000+05:30

The need of a normal human in earlier days used to be food, clothing and shelter. Today with another addition the must haves for a human to live life is food, clothing, shelter and mobile. Be it teenagers, businessmen or house wives mobile is the need of the hour. Same is the case with Internet and Google cashed it very well by the used of context relevant ads. And many other companies followed suit.

Same seems to be the case with text message advertising on mobiles (or mobile marketing to be specific!). Advanced Telecom Services has large number of services all gathered at one place in there portal to provide the best services to its customers. Here goes the list of few interesting ones:

PromoTXT gives the chance to advertisers to enter right into the customers pockets and that too at cheap rates. Advertisers use shared short codes which are send to customers mobile. If the customer is interested then he might revert back following the necessary instructions. The point to note here is that a local advertiser could easily reach "only" his specific local customers if his business does not target those outside his city!

This bulk SMS services lets the advertisers shoot there text ad to a specific set of people where the number of these peoples are already stored in a database. The better part of this is that 70% of ads are read by the receiver when compared to 3% read in emails! Advertisers are allowed to manage there database on there wills thus helping them target consumers the way they want.

This being just a hint there are huge number of services offered by ATS. Go have a look at there website and I assure you that you will find something of your use.

One small suggestion I would like to shoot here to people of ATS is to make there site more attractive. Cover of the book does sells these days!

Technorati Tags: mobile marketing

Are You Dead? MyDeathSpace Is For You

2007-07-29T22:49:00.000+05:30

Humans go to hell (..heaven for few!) after death and there MySpace profiles go to MyDeathSpace.com. Internet is full of innovations and when I hit this site, on Yahoo News, I had to blog about it!

MyDeathSpace grew out of one person's morbid curiosity in December 2005, when two teenage daughters were slain by their father. Mike Patterson, 26, a paralegal from San Francisco, tracked down their MySpace pages one day when he was bored. His voyeurism grew into a live journal that later became MyDeathSpace.

Behold a community spawned from twin American obsessions: Memorializing the dead and peering into strangers' lives. Anyone with Internet access can submit a death to the site, which currently lists nearly 2,700 deaths and receives more than 100,000 hits per day.

Permission to use the profiles is not requested from MySpace, which is not affiliated with the site and did not respond to requests for comment on it. MySpace said in a statement it handles deceased members' pages on a "case-by-case basis" and does not "allow anyone to assume control of a deceased user's profile." Profiles can be deleted if that's requested by family members.

MyDeathSpace matter-of-fact catalogs each death in headline format: "Belford Ramirez (19) died after being stabbed in the neck outside of a Burger King." Click on the link and you'll find a detailed description of the fatal attack — an element usually pulled from a news article or blog — his photograph, and a link to his MySpace profile.

More:
MySpace In Time's Worst 5 Websites List
Future President In You Friend List

Technorati Tags: myspace, mydeathspace

Check Your PR, Backlinks, Alexa Rank And Much More In One Shot

2007-07-29T14:27:00.000+05:30

This one's awesome! Every now and then we need to find our very own blogs Technorati rank, Alexa rank, Google PageRank, Bloglines subscribers, number of backlinks and many more such things. This sometimes becomes a hectic task if you need to do it for many blogs.

So here goes an awesome tool for you which will surely leave you with gaping mouth. Enter yours or anyone else's BLOG URL in the left column and hit enter. Instantly all the necessary stuff will be there in front of you. Even the number of errors which you have n you HTML! Kudos to the NoHeat team for authoring this tool.

Check it out here

Was this tip new for you? Do Subscribe to our RSS feeds for many such amazing ones!

More:
17 Firefox Extensions For Bloggers
Do You Know How Is 'X' In 'Mac OS X' Pronounced
Get Your Lost 'Folder Options' Back
Mom! Playing Games Will Improve My Eyesight

Technorati Tags: check PR

Earn A Confirmed Back Link And Chance To Win 125x125 Ad Spot For FREE

2007-07-28T00:05:00.000+05:30

Here goes a special chance for you to earn a CONFIRMED back link to your blog and a chance to be the lucky one whose blog gets featured in a 125x125 ad spot in the third column of this blog (see screen shot above). The place inside the red and green squares could easily be your for full 20 days. How to get this? Very easy!

The rules:

You need to have your own website/blog.
Subscribe to my RSS feeds and leave a comment here that you have done so. I trust you guys :)
Write a review for my blog into your blog of minimum 250 words.
The review should contain atleast 1 link to my blog with the anchor text CompuWorld (please note the capital letters in CompuWorld).
The review has to contain your views (positive or negative). Please do not copy someone else's review (It's easy to catch that using Google).
Leave another comment here informing me that you have written the review with a link to that review so that I can read it.

Each review will earn a back link to that very blog from this post.

For that Jackpot 125x125 ad space (for 20 days) you will have to wait a little. Once the competition ends I will judge myself the best review and that reviewer will earn the ad space with the image of his/her choice.

The contest continues until I receive minimum 15 reviews. After the 15th review I might end the competition any time I feel like.

Disclaimer: I, the author of this blog, hold the rights to change any rule any time. (Only in emergency I guess. Else I am a honest guy!)

UPDATE: (August 06, 2007) The promised back links go here:

Technorati Tags: blogging contest

Control uTorrent Downloads From Your Mobile

2007-07-27T16:59:00.000+05:30

P2P and uTorrent are living just because there are plenty of nerds out there who love this concept. Another result of one of the uTorrent fans is a mobile interface uTorrent mUI using which you can easily control your uTorrent client using your mobile browser. See his forum post for detailed discussion.

The uTorrent mUI has not been developed by BitTorrent Inc. and is not an official interface (i.e. be ready for few bugs in the coming time).

Check out these tutorials to know the best of uTorrent performance optimization tricks:

I am sure that you would appreciate the CompuWorld tutorial and ofcourse the awesome LifeHacker's tutorial.

If you liked the article then do Subscribe to our RSS feeds for many more amazing ones!

More:
Top 20 Torrent Sites As Of April 2007
How To Download FREE Torrent Files Using Google
uTorrent 1.7 Finally Released In Stable Form
First Pirated HD DVD Hits BitTorrent

Technorati Tags: mobile torrent

Do You Know How Is 'X' In 'Mac OS X' Pronounced? Mostly People Don't Know This!

2007-07-26T16:01:00.000+05:30

See the image above? Did you know this? I am very sure that many of you pronounce 'X' in Mac OS X as 'ex'. Even I used to call it the English alphabet 'x'. But today I read in a magzine (a reliable one..Digit) that 'X' in Mac OS X stands for 'ten'.

And to add to that as Mac is short form of Macintosh so one should write 'Mac' instead of 'MAC'.

So the next time say it 'Mac OS 10' and write it as 'Mac' NOT 'MAC'. Get That!!

Was this tip new for you? Do Subscribe to our RSS feeds for many such amazing ones!

More:
Mac OS X vs Windows Vista. The Battle Continuous
Tech Support For Apple, Dell, Gateway and HP To Improve With Your Help
Mac OS X and Linux Bite the Dust – Windows Vista Did It!

Technorati Tags: mac os x

I Used To Have A 'Folder Options' Option In Tools Menu In Windows Explorer. But Its Gone. How To Get That Back?

2007-07-25T14:58:00.000+05:30

Recently one of my friends had the same problem. His machine was hit by some viruses which disabled the 'Folder Options' Option in the Tools menu in Windows Explorer. This is mostly done by viruses to restrict user from viewing hidden files which one can see after changing settings in 'Folder Options' itself (What? You don't know how to see hidden files? Contact me!).

For those who want to get there 'Folder Options' back here we have 2 ways out. Lets see the first one:

Click on 'start' and then 'run'.
In the 'run' dialog box type gpedit.msc. The Group Policy window will open.
Navigate to the following location: User Configuration> Administrative Templates> Window Components> Windows Explorer
In the right pane, find the 'Remove the folder options menu item'. Set its value to 'Not Configured' by double clicking and setting the correct option.

Now if you like playing with Windows Registry, follow these steps:

Open registry editor by typing regedit in the run dialog box.
Navigate to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Policies\ Explorer
Find the NoFolderOptions key in right pane. Change its value to 0. If you do not have this key. Just create it!

Did you like this trip? Do Subscribe to our feeds for many more interesting ones. Click here for many more tips tricks and hacks.

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Technorati Tags: hack, get back folder options

Be Memorable, Be Inspired, Be Connected, Be Dynamic And Be Daring But Pleeease Forget The Vista 'WOW' Factor

2007-07-24T09:19:00.000+05:30

With Vista not bringing the expected bucks for Microsoft, The Redmond based company is bound to try new ways to "force" people to start thinking about "WOW"! Oh sorry Windows Vista. But sometimes one can really make a mess of things if its too eager to win a prize (even a consolation prize will do at this stage for Microsoft. Read how Bill Gates welcomes Microsoft software piracy in china).

See what (the rich) Microsoft wants you to do. In a new press release yesterday Microsoft wants its Windows Vista buyers to start preparing for Christmas from today itself. They have released a series of laptop options which Windows Vista lovers would love to give out as gifts (for the "SO CLOSE" December Christmas).

And to my surprise nowhere in this press release Microsoft talks about the Vista WOW factor. Instead they give you options to empty your pockets at these hot looking laptops:

Be Memorable:

Dell XPS M1330, from $1,299
Dell Inspiron 1720, from $769

Be Inspired:

Asus Lamborghini VX2, from $2,899

Be Connected

HP tx1000, from $999.99

Be Dynamic

Sony Vaio CR, from $1,140

Sony VGC-LS37E, from $1,899.99

Be Daring

Toshiba R500 Protégé, from $2,149

Wanna go on an "early" shopping, the "cheap" Microsoft style?

Related:
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Pirate Our Software: Microsoft
You, Your Wife, Your Baggage And Microsoft - Shared

Technorati tags: microsoft, vista

Potter Fan + Wish To Read Potter "eBook" = Hate J.K.Rowling

2007-07-23T18:38:00.000+05:30

When the sixth Potter book was released J.K. Rowling did not permit any of the books to be published in electronic form, not even during the peak of the e-book craze a few years ago. Neil Blair, a lawyer with Rowling's literary agency, would only say that "this has not been an area that we have sought to license" and did not comment directly on whether pirated e-books, a common phenomena for Potter titles, were hurting sales.

"We monitor the Internet and take appropriate action," Blair said.

And as the seventh, and most probably the last, Potter book is being sold there seems to be no sign of any legal electronic version coming out. So for those who love to read there books on there computers will have to depend on pirated books to enjoy Potter. Many unauthorized version of HP 7 were released on BitTorrent before the original release and soon after the release of the book officially many Potter fans were found to buy the book from book stores but 'NOT' read it. Instead, they went to the next scanning device and started running their OCR software on little Potter.

And in a recent breakthrough in Bangalore (India) police has seized hundreds of pirated covers of the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series, a city police official said on Monday.

With all this in the run I am afraid if J.K.Rowling's decision to not let official Potter eBooks to be sold will actually somehow help the Potter piracy. Still, once again the Potter fans should be rest assured that they will have to rely on pirated eBooks of Potter if they want to read the book in there computers. No legal eBook for you Harry!

Related:
Harry Potter Fans Have There Own "Fan Following"
Pirated 'Harry Potter', 'Spiderman', 'Meet the Robinsons', 'Mr. Bean's Holiday' And Many More Available At Google Video

Technorati Tags: harry potter, ebook

MySpace In Time's 5 Worst Websites List

2007-07-22T19:36:00.000+05:30

By far the most famous social network around and the most talked about too, MySpace.com was once included in 50 coolest websites of 2006 list of Time itself. But since then things have changed a lot. Many times MySpace has been criticized over different blogs because of the huge spamming which started to take place over it. True that it has been used for America's presidential election campaigns, but that also failed to keep MySpace out of Time's 5 worst websites list.

Other 4 in the list are:

And let me add one to the list too. Orkut.com! Like MySpace it is also being madly used for spamming. Almost every community of orkut today is full of spam messages.

Related:
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Technorati Tags: orkut, myspace, time magazine

Exchange Your "NOT IN USE" DVDs, CDs, Video Games And Books In Return For The Ones You Will Love To Owe

2007-07-21T23:57:00.000+05:30

I thought I wont even earn one offer on ReviewMe. But Alas! My RSS feeds showed an offer and my eyes went bright though it had a payout of just $5, but I guess it would be good to begin with. Something is always better than nothing. And the service which I am to review here is worth looking at. A Cool Innovation!

SwitchPlanet.com is all about switching your stuff over the Internet. All of us do exchange our stuff with our friends and family thus saving money. SwitchPlanet will let you do just that by exposing you to a larger set of audience. What I have noticed about starter companies is that initially they concentrate on there business and once they are a multi million dollar house then they start donating some money to charitable organizations, which in turn gets them a good name too. But the people at SwitchPlanet have devised nice ways where there members, instead of paying any transaction fees, are requested to make a small donation to any of the charitable organizations listed on the SwitchFunds page.

Chris the founder of the cool portal, SP, keeps the momentum going by adding new stuff to the SP collection frequently. And the good thing is that you can also request him to add something of your own interest. And to your surprise this awesome portal, about which I am sure you never knew about, has almost every DVD, CD and book which you would love to owe.

SwitchPlanet also has its forum running where you can learn how to switch (the "art of switching" is what they call it), and do all the DVD CD Book related discussions there. The forum is an active one too as SP is just a new innovation and there forum already has more than 1100 unique topics. So you should be knowing that it is going famous. They also got a cool mission statement. Read on...

Mission Statement

It is our goal to establish SwitchPlanet.com as a premier online community that is committed to helping reduce the impact waste is having on the planet by trading the things we no longer use to get the things we want.

“Use more…waste less.”

Social Responsibility

- Reducing environmental waste
- Helping those who need it most
- Support arts/culture and education

My suggestion: Go SignUp at SwitchPlanet. And Trust me that you will get your favourite DVD, CD or Book in return of the one which you already have.. all this is for FREE!

Technorati Tags: switchplanet

Now You Can "Virtually" Afford A House In LA

2007-07-21T14:07:00.001+05:30

Many times you will face situations where you cannot register into some very useful websites just because you do not live in USA (or may be some other country). Fake Name Generator is here to help you. Refresh the home page and you will every time get some new name, address, email, phone, mother's maiden name, birthday, visa, visa expiry date and SSN. And note this, a new collection of these details "every time".

Fake Name Generator has some useful tools like Graham King's Credit Card Generator, Braemoor's Credit Card Validator, Braemoor's UK National Insurance Number Validator, Braemoor's UK Telephone Number Validator, Braemoor's UK Postal Code Validator.

You can even order "many" identities in bulk. And I do mean it when I say "many". Talking about the number possible unique names, they have a huge collection. For USA itself they are 487,861,706. 1,516,298,553 Hispanic names. 1,281,660 Japanese. 180,094,388 Slovenian names.

The biggest question of all is "Is this really useful?"

Fake Name Generator's FAQ has many reasons for you to read and enjoy:

Quality test data can be hard to come by, especially with laws (such as HIPAA) preventing use of real data. We can quickly and affordably generate test data to help you develop your application.
Many websites, such message boards, are poorly designed, making it difficult for visitors from foreign countries to sign up for accounts. Using fake information, you can easily fill out the sign up forms and log in to the site.
Use fake information when filling out forms to avoid giving out personal information.
Generate a false identity to use as your pseudonym on the Internet. This allows you to keep your real life and your Internet life separate.
Get ideas for names to use for characters in a book or story.
Generated credit cards can be used to test basic client-/server-side validation techniques without accidentally processing a real card.
Generated national identity numbers can be used to test basic client-/server-side validation techniques without risking disclosure of real information.

Go and generate few identities for yourself too.

Technorati Tags: fake name generator

Bloggers Lets Switchover To Spamming And Earn $15000 A Week - And Be Prepared To Go To Hell

2007-07-21T08:36:00.000+05:30

I know that most of you delete those spam messages which ask you to buy "Viagra" for a discounted price. But there are many who don't! And this is enough to make the spam industry give huge profits. Ed-- who does not reveal his full name but sometimes goes by SpammerX-- says he pulled in US$10,000 to $15,000 a week from email spamming. And here are we the bloggers working hard to find unique content to drive visitors and earn some money by ad clicks. But as everyone knows the wrong path to success is always the most profitable one.

He spent 10 hours a day, seven days a week studying how to send spam and avoid filtering technologies in security software designed to weed out garbage e-mail. Most spam filters are effective 99 percent of the time; he aimed for that remaining window, using tricks such as including slightly different images in his spam, which can fool filters into thinking the e-mail is legitimate.

To track the money, merchants set up a "referral sales page" where spammers can see how much they make from a spam run. Ed would log in frequently, watching the money increase. He was paid into electronic payment transfer accounts, such as e-gold or PayPal, or into his debit card account, which he could cash out in $20 bills.

That became problematic when the cash became voluminous. He says he made $480,000 his last year of spamming. But the lifestyle of being a spammer was taking a toll. In essence, he had no life. And that is true too. Imagine what a spammer will tell his girlfriend about his profession. That he sells Viagra by fooling people?

So Ed got out of the business. He's written a book, "Inside the Spam Cartel: Trade Secrets from the Dark Side," which he said has had some take-up in law enforcement circles eager to learn more about the spam business, which he projects will only get worse.

As broadband speeds increase, spammers will increasingly look to market goods by making VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) calls or sending out videos, Ed said. The ultimate unsolvable problem is users, who continue to buy products marketed by spam, making the industry possible.

"I think in 10 years we'll still get spam," Ed said. "Be prepared to be bombarded."

Related:
Not Google But Kevin Ham Owes The Internet

Technorati Tags: spam

BREAKING NEWS - Internet Crashes!

2007-07-20T19:49:00.000+05:30

Now this was ultimate video for me. I do not know how many of you have already seen it but those who haven't seen it yet, they MUST SEE IT. Its got all the perfect looks and feels to make you believe that it actually happened. Its good to have little fun along with your daily routine!

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[via lifehacker]
Technorati Tags: internet crash

Top 10 Ways To Improve Your PageRank

2007-07-19T08:25:00.000+05:30

Stanford University is famous for producing few of the very happening technologies which are running in market presently. One of them being PageRank. For a small introduction, PageRank technology was designed by the Google co-founder Larry Page, while he was a student in Stanford, thus the name PageRank. Google uses PageRank (PR) to rank websites on a scale of 10. Then those rankings act as crucial point of consideration to get listed in top Google Searches.

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Taking an example, consider if a PR 6 website links to you and a PR4 website links to you. In such a case it will ofcourse be the PR6 link which will be considered to have more weight than the PR 4 link. Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages' relative importance.

Here at CompuWorld I will list few points which you can follow daily while working on your site/blog and I am sure it will help you improve your PR:

Content is the King: If you provide quality content then you will get regular readers and many of those will copy a summary (or sometimes the complete article) into there blogs plus linking back to you. Good content may sometimes get renowned bloggers linking to you which will drive traffic and will give your site more weight due to there high PR.
Keyword management: See, whatever your PR be if you do not use proper keywords into your blog you wont get listed into Google searches. So use right keywords in the URL, the "title" tag, the article's heading, the text and the links which you make. Considering my own blog, webtechlog contains all the words which indicate that this blog is all about technology. The "title" tag contains the name of my dream company CompuWorld. That again very well indicates that this blog is about computers. And same goes with all the article headings and content.
Follow the "nofollow" revolution: When you comment on any blog you might see the name of your website under the comment authors name. But know this very well that those links aren't considered by Google for PR calculation. But these days many bloggers are removing the "nofollow" tags from there links in comments. Thus when you comment on there blogs you will earn a link to your blog too. Pretty cool!
Post on forums: There are so many forums available over the Internet that its tough to know which is good and which isn't. A good way could be to check PageRank of these forums. Now post mostly in those forums which have high PageRank. Each link into these forums will be considered by Google bot as a backlink to your site. This way you earn good amount of visitors, a high PR link plus some knowledge too!
Order reviews: Investment is required whenever you want to outshine others in this world of competition. So if you are capable of investing then go order some reviews into high PR blogs which again gives you visitors plus link.
Link Exchange: Blogroll as many of us call it, is a nice way to increase the number of backlinks to you blog. For those who do not like the LONG blogroll list in there blogs could ask the other author to copy some content from your blog and indicate the source. And you do the same too. That way you earn the same weight backlink.
Text Link Ads: Why not pay maximum $30/month to high Pr websites and get listed into there blogs home page. The only downside is that you need to pay that amount every month to keep the link running.
Your own websites network: If you have more than one website than why not link back from each website to you other websites. That also brings you good backlinks and that too without spending a dime!
Submit links to online directories: Online directories mostly have good PR. Start submitting your link to these directories to get high quality backlinks.
Start online contests: Various contests in different blogs is a new way to earn traffic and to get large number of backlinks. Giving you an example, ask your readers to review your blog in there blogs and ask them to link back to your blog in return. Inform them that the best review will earn some cash prize or something unique from your collection if you do not want to spend money.

If you are a blogger then TRUST ME on this, if not today then tomorrow you will be forced to think about PageRank improvement as that is the buzz and will continue to be.

For those who think if I follow all these ways to CompuWorld's PR (currently 3), the answer is no! Being a computer engineering student with a locked scheduled from morning 8 to night 9 I hardly get enough time to look at so many points. So I follow just the first one, "Content is the King!" But other ways have also been tested by many experts and are surely going to help you. Hardwork will pay. Keep working.

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[image via seoservicesblog]
Technorati Tags: google tips, pagerank, improve pagerank

Google's Technical Errors Deletes User Accounts By Mistake

2007-07-18T21:41:00.000+05:30

With the increase in size of any organization the number of bugs creeping into it also increases. Bugs are not part of Microsoft only, recently softpedia came up with an article that states how few Adword clients of Google faced an unusual situation where there Adwords account was deleted without any prior notice.

"Thank you for your email. I'm sorry to hear that you've had trouble with your AdWords account. We've identified a known technical issue affecting a limited number of accounts. Our engineers are currently working to solve the problem and hope to reach a resolution shortly. Also know that I have reactivated your account," it was mentioned in the email notification according to Search Engine Roundtable.

A few AdWords members said they were not even notified about the problems and, after several days of unavailability, the advertising platform returned to the past settings. "My account is live again. i never received any notice of what happened or even that it happened. Just logged in and the red box was gone," Powdork, a senior member of WebmasterWorld, wrote.

This is not the first time when the search giant encounters serious glitches with the users' accounts and accidentally removes some of them. In the past, it was reported that a lot of Gmail accounts became inaccessible as the Mountain View company disabled them due to some problems with the technology.

However, AdWords is a little bit more important for most of the customers because it works with money and some of them might be really affected by the unavailability period caused by the service's issues.

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Technorati Tags: google bug

'Ads By Google' On Your Morning Newspaper

2007-07-18T18:16:00.000+05:30

Innovation has been part of Google Inc. since the birth of Google. Adding another feather to its cap Google is ready to exploit the newspaper market by publishing ads of its adword clients into some of the leading newspaper services of USA initially. As with other services they will ofcourse expand this service to other countries once its out of beta.

Google Print Ads is an extension of AdWords that makes it easy for advertisers and agencies of all sizes to run ads in newspapers across the U.S. – whether you're buying space in one paper or a hundred.

The new ad program would benefit both newspaper publishers and advertisers by streamlining the process of making campaign ads which usually entails a lot of leg work and paper requirements. With the new Google newspaper advertising program, creating an ad campaign in these newspapers becomes as simple as, say clicking a mouse. Advertisers places a bid on which newspaper spot they would like their ads to appear on, publishers approve or disapprove the ad bid, then depending on the outcome of the approval/disapproval, then newspaper publishers run the ad campaigns.

So get ready to see 'Ads by Google' in your morning newspapers similarly as you find those in almost every website these days.

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Technorati Tags: google adwords in newspaper, google

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hollows eBook Hits BitTorrent

2007-07-18T01:24:00.000+05:30

Continuing into my third story of the day all somehow related to Harry Potter, this one is about Harry Potter and the pirated ebook. The latest book, the last may be, in the Potter series "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows" is available for download in bittorrent.

Not one but many torrents of the novel contain of photographed pages of the book thus making it little hard to read. But something is always better than nothing. Once again I wont publish the link to avoid piracy problems but just to inform the fans its easy to search for it.

Go get it, pirated! Another piracy news eats up lots of dollars of someone who deserved it. Still I am sure J.K.Rowling's bank account wont be affected that badly with this!

Harry Potter Fans Have There Own "Fan Following"

2007-07-17T23:02:00.000+05:30

No one can deny the fame which the "dream" world of Harry Potter has earned. Same is the reason why the latest launch of Harry Potter movie destroyed all records in its first week itself. J.K. Rowling, the brain behind Harry Potter, has also earned unexpected fame with the book series breaking all the records. Even the new book which is to be launched very soon has already been booked for over a million copies a lot before it comes up in book stores.

These are 'not' the only people who have earned so much fame. There is one more group which you call as "fans of Harry Potter". So popular are J.K. Rowling's stories, and the Web pages built around them, that a handful of online fans have become stars in their own right.

Arguably the biggest is Emerson Spartz, who was just 12 when he set up www.mugglenet.com. Today the site is visited up to 40 million times a month, making it one of the biggest Potter sites in the world and a viable commercial venture.

"I spent the entire summer on the road signing thousands of autographs, which is simply unheard of for a geeky kid who created a Web site," he told Reuters by telephone from the United States, where he is a university student.

"Harry Potter has got to a point where it is so popular that even fans have fans," the 20-year-old added.

Rowling has long recognized the power of the Internet.

Her own Web site, www.jkrowling.com, boasts up to seven million hits every day and Spartz and Anelli were invited in 2005 to hold a rare interview with her.

The author also publicly backed The Leaky Cauldron's campaign to prevent spoilers appearing on the Internet ahead of the launch of "Deathly Hallows", which will answer the question on ever Potter fan's lips -- which characters will die?

One hacker claims to have leaked key plot details on to the Internet after breaking into a computer at Rowling's British publisher Bloomsbury.

Reuters has also seen online photographs purporting to be the last pages of book seven, which, if genuine, provide the answers to the biggest secrets of all.

Technorati Tags: harry potter fans

Pirated 'Harry Potter', 'Spiderman', 'Meet the Robinsons', 'Mr. Bean's Holiday' And Many More Available At Google Video

2007-07-17T16:55:00.000+05:30

Problems do not seem to end up for the film industry and for online video sites too. Pirated versions of latest movies are uploaded successfully into sites like YouTube and Google video and viewed by thousands daily. The Viacom $1 billion lawsuit burns were still fresh for Google and here they are hanging up in the middle with National Legal and Policy Center posting a list of 50 movies whom they have found and flagged in Google video.

For those excited with the news that they might get chance to view these movies online, NLPC hasn't uploaded links to these movies so as to avoid any further damages. But after reading the article I went on to search for them on Google Video and was easily able to find the links with little digging. Sad for Google. I also wont be uploading the links here to avoid any piracy issues!

Ironically, many other Internet operations such as MySpace, TorrentSpy, DailyMotion and Break.com have set up filtering systems to block copyrighted material. Google is a $158 Billion company with arguably the most advanced search technology in the world. The argument that Google cannot block pirated content because of technological or financial reasons is laughable.

NLPC has also uploaded a pdf file with screen shots of those movies.

After Birth Of Over 100 Million Blogs, Finally Orkut Gets A Blog

2007-07-16T23:30:00.001+05:30

Every organization, every forum, every website these days seems to have a blog to keep in touch with there viewers. Even Google has over 70 official blogs for there various services. What was missing was a blog for orkut. And they finally have one. And that does not has the "blogspot" word in the URL. Its http://en.blog.orkut.com/.

It was launched on 25th June and I know I am late to cover it, but you know why? Because Google gave a alert to it on my orkut profile after so many days. Finally orkuttians could be happy that they have something to interact with if they want to talk about any changes in orkut.com.

Do read our article Be A Orkut Watchdog. Read Orkut Scraps As RSS.

Internet Explorer Hit With Another Vulenrability

2007-07-16T22:52:00.000+05:30

In midst of attacks from Firefox fans Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 has another vulnerability added to its collection. Security company Secunia has discovered a flaw in IE7 which can be exploited by a malicious website to spoof the address bar, however the company rated the flaw as less critical.

The vulnerability is caused due to an error in the handling of the "document.open()" method and can be exploited to spoof the address bar if e.g. the user enters a new website manually in the address bar, which is commonly exercised as best practice.

Older versions might be also be affected but there are no reports available yet. This vulnerability is extremely important for the Redmond company as its top browser, Internet Explorer 7 is involved into the battle with Firefox and other applications for the leader position of the category.

Solution:
Close all browser windows after visiting untrusted websites.
Technorati Tags: internet explorer vulnerability

Yahoo Suggestions. Oh Sorry, Yahoo Search Suggest

2007-07-16T17:49:00.000+05:30

Google Suggests suggest you an example of what you were searching, displaying along with the example the number of results for that keyword. Yahoo, a little late though, has also launched it suggestions tool Yahoo Search Suggest. Similar in working like Google Suggestions Yahoo forgets to tell you the number of results for that keyword.

Google Suggests FAQ states that it has integrated the technology with Google News too. Its a different case that I wasn't able to find that working. Yahoo on the other hand is still working with there new tools bug fixes.

Google and Yahoo both let you disable the suggest feature if you find it disturbing. I do not find it disturbing though. Its more of a helper many times. Like if I was to search for Arnold Swarchenegger both would display the full spelling when I type Arnold S. It saves me from writing down that sir name. Quite a help!

Technorati Tags: yahoo search suggest

40Gb/s Internet: And I Thought My ISP Was Improving Quick!

2007-07-15T19:58:00.000+05:30

Slowly moving from dial-up to 256 Kb/s broadband and then to 2 Mb/s Broadband for general Internet users, I had started to think that India is soon going to catch up with other countries which are already providing T1 connection to there Internet users. But sometimes targets never seem to inch closer even when you are working "very" hard.

A 75 year old woman from Karlstad in central Sweden has been thrust into the IT history books - with the world's fastest Internet connection.

Sigbritt Löthberg's home has been supplied with a blistering 40 Gigabits per second connection, many thousands of times faster than the average residential link and the first time ever that a home user has experienced such a high speed.

But Sigbritt, who had never had a computer until now, is no ordinary 75 year old. She is the mother of Swedish Internet legend Peter Löthberg who, along with Karlstad Stadsnät, the local council's network arm, has arranged the connection.

"This is more than just a demonstration," said network boss Hafsteinn Jonsson.

"As a network owner we're trying to persuade Internet operators to invest in faster connections. And Peter Löthberg wanted to show how you can build a low price, high capacity line over long distances," he told The Local.

Sigbritt will now be able to enjoy 1,500 high definition HDTV channels simultaneously. Or, if there is nothing worth watching there, she will be able to download a full high definition DVD in just two seconds.

The secret behind Sigbritt's ultra-fast connection is a new modulation technique which allows data to be transferred directly between two routers up to 2,000 kilometres apart, with no intermediary transponders.

According to Karlstad Stadsnät the distance is, in theory, unlimited - there is no data loss as long as the fibre is in place.

"I want to show that there are other methods than the old fashioned ways such as copper wires and radio, which lack the possibilities that fibre has," said Peter Löthberg, who now works at Cisco.

Cisco contributed to the project but the point, said Hafsteinn Jonsson, is that fibre technology makes such high speed connections technically and commercially viable.

For those wondering what would one do with 40 Gb/s speed? Let me make it clear we are moving into the world of online TV. Such connections will provide fast streaming. Think about watching TV and playing PS3, all online!

Technorati Tags: 40 Gb/s broadband

The Complete Windows Vista vs. Windows XP Networking Performance Comparison

2007-07-15T18:03:00.000+05:30

With the latest versions of client and server operating systems, Microsoft is delivering nothing short of "dramatic network performance benefits." This is the conclusion that the Tolly Group has presented following a comparison of two tandems: Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, formerly codenamed Longhorn and Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003. The results have been comprised into a study commissioned by Microsoft and performed by the Tolly Group entitled "Enhanced Network Performance with Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008." It is clear that with Vista available since November 30, 2006 for businesses and January 30, 2007 for the general consumers, and with Windows Server 2008 scheduled for RTM by the end of 2007, Microsoft is on the offensive with a marketing campaign aimed specifically at the corporate environment.

Here Microsoft is not exclusively interested in the adoption of Windows Vista over Windows XP, but also in the replacement of Windows Server 2003 with Windows Server 2008. With the first service pack for Windows Vista to hit the market simultaneously with Windows Server 2008, businesses will profit to upgrade the client operating system. And Microsoft wants to make sure that it will also be the opportune moment for the swap between Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. This is why, with the help of the Tolly white paper, Microsoft is connecting the dots between the enhanced TCP/IP networking stack and support and increased network performance and of course added productivity.

"Just upgrading client PCs to Microsoft's Windows Vista can yield throughput and time-to-completion improvements of up to 2.5X over Windows XP. Complete migration of servers to Windows Server 2008 can yield throughput and time-to-completion improvements of up to 3.5X over Windows XP/Windows Server 2003," reads a highlighted fragment from the Tolly Group's study. Just click on the images at the bottom in order to access graphics from the white paper. The Tolly group has addressed both LAN (Local Area Network) and WAN (Wide Area Network) scenarios and the results of the tests are summarized below.

Related:
Vista Software Compatibility List
Book Of Tips For Vista
Disable Vista's UAC But Be Cautious
All Vista Flavors Explained

Source: softpedia
Technorati Tags: vista vs xp

Green Laptops

2007-07-15T07:39:00.000+05:30

Worldwide laptop sales are expected to surpass desktop sales by 2009, reaching the figure of 150 million. Studies show that most laptop buyers keep their hardware around for only about three years, before discarding it and buying a new one (excluding me). Here is how laptop designers plan to make laptops more eco-friendly across their entire life span, from the producer to the recycling plant.

Problem 1: Case made from plastic, plastic made from oil
Solution: Make cases from bioplastics, plant-based polymers, as this method requires less oil and energy to produce than traditional plastics do. Fujitsu made a prototype laptop with a half natural, half conventional case and now it is testing a plastic that has up to 80% bio-content.

Problem 2: Thrown away laptops go to lanfills
Solution: Upgrade your old laptop, do not buy a new one, and discard it after a few years. Soon it may be easier and cheaper to upgrade components in your laptop than completely replace it (producers should support this movement). Asus recently released a laptop that lets users upgrade most of core components like processor, video card, memory and hard drive, by simply removing one panel.

Problem 3: Power draining displays
Solution: Build laptops that use the much newer OLED( organic light-emitting diodes) technology that need only a fraction of the power used by the traditional LCD displays, as they have no backlighting.

Problem 4: Using power from the grid
Solution: Use portable solar chargers, as they already exists. The MSI Computer company developed a laptop with photovoltaic cells integrated directly into its case.

Problem 5: Laptops contain some toxic materials
Solution: Last year, the European Union enacted legal limits on toxins in electronics sold, where the U.S. introduced a similar rating system for computers.

Problem 6: Short lived hard drives
Solution: Switch to flash memories as it has no parts in motion, uses less power and it is faster. Dell produced a laptop with a 32GB solid state drive this year and Samsung appreciates that solid state drives will hold 30 times more data than they do now.

uTorrent 1.7 Finally Released In Stable Form

2007-07-14T21:26:00.000+05:30

First official stable release of uTorrent client after it got sold to BitTorrent is here. uTorrent 1.7 is out after spending several months under constant development and bug tracking. uTorrent fans need not worry about there favorite client as the new version is just an update of the older one with some enhanced features. Plus this one is fully vista compatible.

Do have a look at our famous article "Optimizing uTorrent's Settings For Enhanced Performance."

Few of the new features in uTorrent 1.7 are:

Full Vista support!
Local peer discovery: Find local peers on your own network
Option to update to beta versions of uTorrent
Fixes and numerous enhancements
And a lot more...

Something very new to this version is that you are not required to make separate downloads for installer and standalone application. With one (very small) .exe file you can either use it as standalone application or install it into your windows system. Cool hmm!

Related:
Top 20 Torrent Sites As Of April 2007
How To Download FREE Torrent Files Using Google
First Pirated HD DVD Hits BitTorrent

Technorati Tags: torrent 1.7

Capture Screenshots In Windows Media Player

2007-07-13T15:34:00.000+05:30

Capturing screenshots of a video running in Windows Media Player isn't just a click of a button easy. Many times when I had tried to capture screenshots of a movie running in Windows Media Player using "Print Screen" button I used to receive a black image. Recently I came up with these easy methods to capture screenshots which require little tweaking of the Media Player settings.

Starting with the easiest method:

While a movie is running or paused in Windows Media Player and you want to capture the screenshot of that movie then instead of pressing "Print Screen" try pressing "Ctrl+I". A window opens where you can choose the path to save the image file.

Now if you like using the "Print Screen" button for the job then you need to do little easy tweaking in Media Player settings just once and you will be done. So here we go:

Open Windows Media Player
Go to Tools>Options
Select Performance Tab
Click on the Advanced button down below
Uncheck the "Use Overlays" option.
Click Ok and then click Apply
You are done

Now you can use your "Print Screen" button to take screenshots of video in Windows Media Player.

Technorati Tags: capture screen shots in windows media player

Swivel - See Numeric Data Graphically

2007-07-11T17:59:00.000+05:30

It is always better for your brain to remember an image instead of data (like numbers). Creating graphs for your numeric data is general practice to attract readers and for ease of view. One can use MS Excel to create graphs but its always good to have similar features with online internet connection so that you do not loose your work.

Swivel.com is a website that accomplishes these requirements. It helps you create graphical representation of your data in the manner you feel like and uploads that graph in its servers under your account name. That graph could also be viewed by any other internet surfer. Graphs that get most visits also make it to the home page of the website giving a chance for you to drive some traffic to your website too.

I found an interesting graph which shows the rise in cost of MS Windows (home editions) from 1992 till 2007. Click on the image to enlarge the graph.

Technorati Tags: create graphs, tricks

Find Out Where A Website Is Being Hosted

2007-07-11T13:29:00.000+05:30

Ever wondered the actual company hosting the famous websites which drive heavy traffic daily. There might be many ways to find out the hosting company but this tool is the best and easiest to use.

Go to www.whoishostingthis.com, just type in the website name and click "tell me". And you have the answer straight!

Technorati tags: hosting company

My Computer Keeps Restarting Without Warning

2007-07-10T23:20:00.000+05:30

Does your computer restart without any prior warning? You do not need to worry about this. We have the solution for you. This problem could happen at many levels. So lets start step by step.

Are you able to boot into the OS? If yes then at least your "Restart Switch " isn't getting short. But could be a super sensitive switch or a bad power switch too which creates the problem.

Now check if your computer is set to standby/sleep after certain time. Maybe it has problems going to sleep and can't wake up, or restarts upon awaking. Disable this in your OS as well as in the BIOS (if there is an option).

If above two are working then its time to check the power supply. Here goes a small intro of how the power supply works.

If the voltage from the wall outlet or from within the power supply [faulty power supply] falls outside the tolerances required by the computer, the computer will reboot. This happens because the power supply constantly sends the motherboard a power-good signal, for example, if the power supply cannot maintain outputs that are within tolerance, the power-good signal is withdrawn and forces the system to reset. The system will not restart until the power-good signal returns. The power-good signal may be absent for a second or less, but that will still force the computer to reset.

This point has to do with proper power being supplied.

Check your wall socket for proper voltage. If you have the computer hooked up to the same line that goes to heavy power draw devices, such as an airconditioner, microwave oven and so on, does your system reboot when one of these devices is running? If so, you may need to change the outlet that you use or may need to run a new line to your computer, dedicated to the computer.

More:
I Lost My 'Folder Options'. How To Get That Back
Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Google PageRank
Swivel - See Numeric Data Graphically
10 Windows Live Features - Must See

Technorati Tags: computer keeps restarting

Stolen Credit Card's Money Being Used For Good Cause

2007-07-09T07:50:00.000+05:30

Symantec Security Blog points out to a completely rare trend being followed by people who use stolen credit cards to make payments. Such fraudsters find it difficult to verify if there stolen card is actually worth making any payments or not. Using credit cards in public outlets could easily raise eyebrows with the police pinching them down.

To overcome this carders are donating money to charity, even to the famous ones like Red Cross. This easily helps them determine if the stolen credit card is usable or not. There are likely a number of reasons that this method may be becoming more popular. For instance, bank behavior monitors may be less likely to pick up on donations to charities. Legitimate charitable donations are not daily transactions for anyone with a credit card, and so it would be difficult to determine if they are out of the norm. As such, it wouldn’t be too surprising to see this trend grow. I guess the one thing to note here though is that at least some of the stolen money is going to a good cause.

NOTE: I would like to inform my readers that they should give up the myth that its always the hackers who use could use the stolen credit cards. The bank, whom you trust a lot, has employees who could easily pass out your credit card information to anyone without you knowing about it. So to be on the safer side try not to trust just any other bank. One should do little security checks as the bank manager does while hiring its 'incompetent' employees.

Related:
Hacking: The Must Learn Tips To Be Safe
Comparison Of The Best Anti-Viruses Available
HOW-TO: Paypal Security Key
NSA To Secure Your Network

Technorati Tags: security, hacking, stolen credit card

Packaging: Windows Vista, Ubuntu, Mac OS X

2007-07-08T21:02:00.000+05:30

As of me Ubuntu gets the edge. The CD cover design on the left is just one of the many variations that are centered on the same idea. Ubuntu has the courage to associate human faces to a software product. Faces repeating different versions and interpretations of the Ubuntu logo. "Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'Humanity to others', or 'I am what I am because of who we all are'. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world," is the company's official explanation for their distribution of the Linux operating system. I am a Windows man myself, and a Windows Vista hard-core user, but I simply fell in love with Ubuntu due to its ease of use.

When it comes down to the actual design of the box, Microsoft's Windows Vista is hands down the winner. The unique box however has as main practical purpose the company's need to differentiate genuine Windows Vista copies from pirated versions, sold as legitimate software. While the packaging is not impossible to counterfeit, Microsoft has come to the conclusion that bootleggers did not even try, and instead sold Vista as pirated. By comparison, the boxes for Ubuntu and Tiger are not spectacular. Not for their shape, but what about style? Vista gets second place in my list. It is obvious that Microsoft's user experience team has done a great job with the design of the overall style of Windows Vista. It is Aero from one end to the other, and the boxes are clear illustrations.

Windows Vista's packing's suffer from impersonality; well, the Tiger box says nothing to me. The designers that have looked endlessly for the best CRT monitor, just to enjoy the largest gamut possible in Photoshop know what I am talking about. Tiger's box is too simple and primitive for my taste, and in this sense it is just the antonym of Ubuntu's design. Position 3 to Mac OS X.

Related:
Mac OS X vs Vista

Technorati Tags: design of vista ubuntu Mac OS X

Ocean’s 13 Game Now Available For Download By Zapak.com

2007-06-30T14:10:00.000+05:30

Developing games which relate to blockbuster movies is a trend and this always seems to help the game. Spiderman was an example and another famous movie has its game programmed, this time in India. India’s biggest gaming portal – Zapak.com, has released ‘Ocean’s 13,’ which is the first game to be developed on the renowned Ocean’s series. While Ocean’s 13 film is slated to hit theatres on June 8, the game is available for download right away exclusively in India on Zapak.com.

The game takes its inspiration from the film itself. It revolves around the plot of the movie. Willy Bank, a brutal casino owner ends up double-crossing one of the original Ocean’s eleven, Reuben Tishkoff, Danny, and that’s when the gang joins hands once again to see if they can break ‘The Bank’ in just three and a half minutes. Play four different casino games - Slots, Blackjack, Texas Hold’em Poker and Roulette, gambling your way from start to finish.

Ocean’s 13 has four different casino games, Slots, Blackjack, Texas Hold’em Poker and Roulette. Players get to choose your favorite member of the team as you start with a $10,000 credit. There are spaces on the game board and each space on the board is worth $10,000. One by one, you play all the four games. For every $10,000 you make at the Bank, you are allowed to move forward one space on the board. But if you lose in the games, then your money is lost and you must move back one space for every $10,000 you gamble.

Rules to be followed whilst playing Ocean’s 13 game are:

You start with a $10,000 credit, which allows you to get to the first square on the board and put your money into one of the Bank’s slot machines.

Each space on the board is worth $10,000.

For every $10,000 you make at the Bank, you are allowed to move forward one space on the board.

The minimum bet for all games is $10,000 and there is no limit to how much of your money you can risk.

If you are successful, you will earn money and advance spaces on the board.

If you are unsuccessful, your money is forfeited and you must move back one space for every $10,000 you bet.

Game Play:

Choose your favorite member of the team and advance to the first square.

Try your luck at slots. If you win, you advance. If you lose, you will receive another $10,000 so you can try again, but the timer will not stop.

As you advance through the game, when you land on a space you are dealt a card containing one of four mini-games: Slots, Blackjack, Texas Hold’em Poker or Roulette.

Choose your wager and play the game. Move forward if you win and backwards if you lose.

Chinese Internet Users Prefer Google Search

2007-06-30T14:09:00.001+05:30

Chinese research company Intelliconsulting released a report (in Chinese) on the search result preferences of 2,740 web users that participated in a 12 day blind test.

Whenever they did a search during the test period they didn’t know whether they were searching with Baidu or Google. The software used for this Blind Test was developed by Tsinghua University (Beijing). More information on the method Intelliconsulting used is not available at this time.

Participants had to rate 8 different type of search results: news, Internet and technology, finance/business, entertainment, shopping/dining, travel/transportation, science/culture/education, and government services/public information.

The main conclusion, as given in search engine journal, of the research is that Google delivers more satisfying results than Baidu. 48.2% for Google, 39.8% for Baidu.

[click images to enlarge them]

Another noteworthy part of the research is that the more a respondent uses search engines, the better he likes the results of Google.

The respondents were also asked what they didn’t like about the search results.

The instability of Google’s website, thanks mostly to the great Chinese firewall, was seen as negative as well as having no page-caching. The fact that Google doesn’t offer a search functionality for free mp3’s and other downloadable entertainment was also not appreciated.

The instability of Google’s website is a matter of politics whereas mp3 search is more likely a matter of law.

Sound Search: Only One Of Its Kind

2007-06-26T14:44:00.000+05:30

Since the success of Google many search engines came up. Many new ideas emerged like image search, blog search, news search etc. but I failed to find something related to sound search. Probably due to piracy infringements. FindSounds.com is a website I recently came across that’s the perfect place to go on the web when you need to find a sound clip. It’s like the card catalog for sounds with just about any sound imaginable.

FindSounds processes millions of sounds clips, so there’s lots to choose from. This is where their examples come in handy. Where to start? They offer a whole list full of different examples of sounds that they have broken down into categories like animals, holidays, household, insects, instruments, people, TV and movies, and vehicles. And those are just examples to get you started! If you already have a search term in mind, you can just enter it in.

Not only do they offer the free search engine for sounds, they also have a program called FindSounds Palette which will search the FindSounds index and help you organize your sounds clips. It costs, but if it sounds interesting, you can get more info on their latest version here.

This search engine will take time to expand but its a rare idea of its kind and could be a revolution. Go get your favorite sound all at one place.

Technorati Tags: sound search

Want To Type Fast? Use This.

2007-06-20T21:55:00.001+05:30

This is the only way available to "utilize" the time which is going to run FAST with the speed with which technology is running!

[via ineedtostopsoon]

CompuWorld Will Decelerate For The Next One Month

2007-06-12T22:57:00.000+05:30

I will be out of city for my summer training from 14th June, 2007. The training is expected to last for 1 month "maximum" and two days "minimum". I would of course try to rap the thing up in least time so that I could get back to my blogging schedule. But hey summer training is also necessary stuff. That will I guess give me more exposure to practical world of computer networking (That's my another love. . . computer networking).

But me going out does not mean that articles publishing in CompuWorld will be zero. Once in 2-3 days I will publish the already prepared articles. Those articles will focus less on latest news and will be more related to tips tricks and hacks section. So you will keep getting necessary stuff which you like.

I know that my daily reader count will decrease in the next one month but my passion wont and I will be back with a better pace after my intern. Till then subscribe to CompuWorld's feed to get useful tricks which of course will enhance your surfing experience.

Below listed are some of the posts which received good amount of user response & are still getting listed in Google Search:

These and many more all listed in the right column and on the top of the page. Explore CompuWorld and you can be rest assured that something or the other of use which will enhance your surfing experience will be available to you in our archives. Wish me luck!

Warning: Google Video Could Be Used To Hack Your Password

2007-06-12T21:44:00.000+05:30

Google Video could be used to learn the username and password of the users who post videos on there MySpace accounts. This is possible as Google uses http instead of https in the URL. A user posted this in digital points forum. This is what he posted:

When a friend sent me a link to this rather boring video http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?...85184878490822 I immediately noticed the 'Email - Blog - Post to Myspace' link on the right side. As any curious person would do I decided to check it out to see how Google has integrated with MySpace.

So after clicking I was greeted with the following popup http://video.google.co.uk/blogpost?d...22&siteindex=3 and immediately noticed that the url of it was http, and not https. An insecure form... So I figured it must be posting the login details to a https url, so I pulled out live headers and this is what I got:

http://video.google.co.uk/blogpost

POST /blogpost HTTP/1.1
Host: video.google.co.uk
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U;
Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070309 Firefox/2.0.0.3
Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+
xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,
image/png,*/*;q=0.5
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Referer: http://video.google.co.uk/blogpost?d...22&siteindex=3
Content-Length: 42
Cookie: PREF=ID=26c938172fc51030:TM=1178041215:
LM=1138046118:S=Bw_pBCzx-opEyR3s; sloc=en_GB
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache
req=login&name=myusername
&pass=mypassword&site=MySpace

In short this users find says that Google is passing private information which includes MySpace, LiveJournal, Blogger, and TypePad login details over insecure channels. And since Blogger accounts sometimes use Google Accounts for login, such a flaw could expose a user’s GMail, Google AdWords, Google AdSense, and maybe even Google Checkout information (unless this information is encrypted).

The private and sensitive information is being passed without SSL, which is a basic and common step in the Internet security process.

Warning: YouTube Could Be Used To Hack Your Computer

2007-06-12T21:10:00.000+05:30

The most viewed online video website YouTube could be used to gain unauthorized control to your computer. The entire exploitation is based on a file named YouTube04567.exe that must be downloaded and executed by a user with administrator privileges. After the malicious file is entirely installed on a computer, it opens a YouTube video called "After World Episode 6" while, in the background, it downloads other two dangerous files used for stealing information. After the transfer of the sensitive details is completed, your information is uploaded on a HTTP server until it is viewed by the attacker.

"The other day we ran into a new technique that makes and attempt to distract the user into viewing a new YouTube video. The application uses the movie icon when it gets downloaded to the machine but strictly relies on deception to get you to run it.The file is called YouTube04567.exe and was hosted on a web server in the .SU domain (Soviet Union). Although we captured this code through on the web, our guess is that there are email and/or instant messaging lures for this URL in the wild," mentions the Websense Blog.

One should learn that executable files that are claiming to be YouTube clips can NOT be YouTube clips by any means. Also, keep in mind that YouTube is a clean website and it doesn't deliver any type of threat; so don't be afraid that you might get infected while you're viewing clips on the online video sharing service. Still, try to keep your antivirus updated and your firewall enabled.

Websense has created a video demonstrating the hack in action. Any ironically its uploaded in you tube. Do have a look at it to be clear about the hack.

Watch Out Paris, Britney Another Celebrity Site With Big Fan Following Ready To Deliver The Hot Truth

2007-06-12T07:13:00.000+05:30

"Paris drops dumb blond act", "Paris plays for sympathy", "Hot Hollywood beach bods" These and many more are the expected headlines which will now regularly appear on the new Yahoo Celebrity Website "omg". No doubt why such sites drive maximum traffic.

Unfortunately, Yahoo! OMG offers no RSS feeds for any of the content. Still now you can be rest assured that one of the worlds largest visited portals will keep you updated with celeb news which you want.

Technorati Tags: omg, paris hilton, britney

Microsoft Windows Vista Goes Spanish

2007-06-11T22:38:00.000+05:30

Dale un vistazo a Windows Vista y tú también dirás "!Wow!". Probable more and more people were answering "sí" to "do you want a copy of Windows Vista?", which led Microsoft to create a dedicated Windows Vista website for Spanish speakers. Similarly as Google's efforts of creating language specific searches engines has benefited it, Microsoft is also sure to get more and more dedicated customers with this effort.

Furthermore, Microsoft is also taking its own Hispanic employees to the center stage. Literally, because the company will debut a series of seminars designed to educate Hispanic parents in the intricacies of the Windows Vista parental controls.

As of softpedia Miami will be the main location of on-site Spanish-language demonstrations in June, because of the strong local Hispanic community. In addition to Parental Controls, Microsoft will also deliver insight into the Multilanguage User Interface, Windows Aero and Windows Media Center. "As a Hispanic father myself, I’m proud of sharing my technological knowledge with other Hispanic parents who can benefit from it," said Luis Martinez, Windows Vista developer at Microsoft. "The parental control features built into Windows Vista will help families better manage how the PC is used and will help them protect their children."

Now A Church Sues Sony

2007-06-10T15:57:00.000+05:30

Web 2.0 has brought with itself too many lawsuit infringements. Youtube takes the lead with many companies taking there turns to sue it for videos which Youtube should not have on its website. It seems a nice way to earn money.

This time its Church of England sues Sony over the use of Manchester Cathedral as the backdrop to Resistance: Fall of Man, a PlayStation 3 game "in which hundreds are killed during a virtual shoot-out inside the Cathedral".

The Church says Sony didn't ask for permission to use the cathedral and has demanded an apology and the removal of the game from shop shelves - otherwise legal action will be considered. Now that's a big ask, especially as it's one of PS3's biggest sellers. Sony has not returned calls to officials from the Church. Sony has also been branded "irresponsible" for choosing Manchester. Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, said: "It is well known that Manchester has a gun crime problem. For a global manufacturer to re-create one of our great Cathedrals with photo-realistic quality and then encourage people to have guns battles in the building is beyond belief and highly irresponsible."

ITV concluded by saying that during the game "players are asked to assume the role of an army sergeant and win a battle" and that screenshots show the interior of the Cathedral "with the player's gun ready to fight; soldiers can be seen elsewhere in the nave taking aim".

Related:
Can You Predict Youtube's Age

Technorati Tags: church sues sony

Comparison Of The Best Anti Viruses Available

2007-06-10T00:49:00.000+05:30

Andreas Clementi, who runs the web site av-comparatives.org, has released his latest report that looks at how well antivirus programs do against threats that have not yet been identified and included in standard AV signatures. The test looked at 17 different products, including offerings from Symantec, McAfee, AVG, Kaspersky, and Microsoft, and tested how well releases dated February 2 (with no updates) fared against a swath of new malware—viruses, scripts, trojans, and other nasties—that were discovered between February 2 and May 2. Here I present a small summary of the same:

Tested Products:

Avast! Professional Edition 4.7
AVG Anti-Malware 7.5
AVIRA AntiVir Personal Edition Premium 7.03
BitDefender Professional Plus 10
Dr.Web for Windows 95-XP 4.33.2
eScan Anti-Virus 8.0
ESET NOD32 Anti-Virus 2.70.23
Fortinet FortiClient 3.0
F-Prot for Windows 6.0.5.1
F-Secure Anti-Virus 7.01
G DATA AntiVirusKit (AVK) 17.0
Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6.0.2
McAfee VirusScan 11.1
Microsoft OneCare 1.5
Norman Virus Control 5.82
Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 14.0
TrustPort Antivirus Workstation 2.5

If you plan to buy an Anti-Virus, please visit the vendor's site and evaluate their software by downloading a trial version, as there are also many other features (e.g. firewall, behavior blocker, etc.) and important things (e.g. compatibility, graphical user interface, language, price, etc.) for an Anti-Virus that you should evaluate by yourself. Even if quite important, the data provided in the test reports on this site are just some aspects that you should consider when buying Anti-Virus software.

Test Results:

[click on images to enlarge them]

Summary Results:

Overall, the tests seem to indicate that for dealing with malware, the two leading programs (McAfee and Norton) are quite firmly in the middle of the pack in terms of effectiveness, and Microsoft evidently has some work to do to bring OneCare up to the level of its competitors.

The PDF version could be downloaded from here.

Technorati Tags: anti virus comparison

Want To Bet On Google's Next Move

2007-06-09T16:01:00.000+05:30

Google has attained heights with every move it made. It is known for creating unusual decisions which are always applauded by its fans. Here is another achievement. One of the world's largest online betting portals, bodog.com, is offering risk takers a chance to wager on which company will be the next bought by Google. The best odds, at 3 to 1, are on Facebook. There are 7-to-1 odds that it will be Associated Press and the same odds on CNET Networks, parent company of CNET News.com. So far, the loser in terms of odds is Automattic, which created blogging software WordPress. It has odds of 12 to 1.

People can also bet on whether the cheapest AT&T unlimited data plan for the Apple iPhone will be more than, less than or equal to $29.99, and what will happen to the value of Apple's stock on June 29, which is the iPhone's scheduled release date, among other tech-related matters.

Related:
Google Did Not Ignore Your Email
Is Google X Being Re-tested

Technorati Tags: bet on google

Google Did Not Ignore Your E-Mail

2007-06-08T23:05:00.000+05:30

Many of you believe that Google is such a big company that doesn't have enough time to answer all the messages sent to its inbox so it's obvious to ignore some of them. Others sustain that Google is not doing many things to improve its solutions unless the users report problems or wants to evolve the current products. However, the Mountain View company is continuously working on its solutions and this is obvious because new features are rolled out periodically. Moreover, Matt Cutts, the Google engineer, wanted to clarify the questions and posted a message on his blog.

Speaking about the current work at Google, Matt said the search giant is continuously working on the solutions but some of the improvements are not noticeable so the critics might be somehow fair. However, all these accusations disappear once the company debuts an innovatory product such as the Street View included in Google Maps.

"Some people think that Google changes a few things every few months. At least in search quality, it’s more like a few things every week. From the article: "the search-quality team makes about a half-dozen major and minor changes a week to the vast nest of mathematical formulas that power the search engine. I don’t think we’ve discussed our pace of search quality changes before," he said.

Technorati Tags: matt cutts, google

Hindu Group Making Software To Partly Block Orkut

2007-06-08T21:34:00.000+05:30

A right-wing Hindu group has asked public Internet centers in India to partly block access to Orkut, and is making a software to monitor abusive communities on the popular social networking site operated by Google.

The student wing of the Shiv Sena party said many Indians use Orkut to bad-mouth religious groups and disturb communal harmony, and also spread misinformation about India.

The group is part of a growing band of cultural vigilantes opposed to what they see as increasing mimicry of the West. It often stops St. Valentine's Day celebrations, attacks clubs and pubs and prevents screening of sexually bold films.

"Orkut is used by many destructive elements to spread canards about India, Hindus, our gods and cultural heritage," said Abhijit Phanse, president of Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena, the student group.

"We are gently telling Internet cafe owners that it is their responsibility to see that surfers do not use their facility to carry out such hate campaigns," he said.

"Or else, we will have to do that job for them."

Last week, dozens of Shiv Sena workers vandalised some Internet centers, saying they were not stopping their customers from accessing Orkut groups involved in sending hate messages.

"We are not saying all of Orkut should be shut. We are just saying stop access to those groups that indulge in hate campaigns," Phanse said.

Internet cafe owners said they had received a letter from the group saying that if they did not spot and stop people surfing Orkut to spread hate messages, their businesses would be attacked.

"The letter was pasted on our wall. But what can we do? It is up to the Internet service providers to block a site," said a cyber cafe owner who was too scared to be named.

Phanse said his group was developing a special software that Internet service providers could install to block any message containing certain words and phrases such as "I hate" or "I despise".

"The software should be ready in 2-3 months," Phanse said, adding that they were hoping to involve Orkut authorities in the discussions.

Related:
Be A Orkut Watchdog. Read Scraps Without Visiting There Profiles
SMS The Orkut Scrap

Source: Reuters
Technorati Tags: block orkut

IITk Website Hacked

2007-06-07T17:03:00.000+05:30

[Click Images To Enlarge Them]

Indian Institute Of Technology, Kanpur (IITk), which is considered to be the best engineering institute of India and its teaching methodologies are recognized world wide, had its website hacked few days back by probably a McDonald Fan. When you click on the above images to see the enlarged view you will find (marked with red arrows and color) the changes which the hacker made. The hack not only displays the knowledge of hacker but it also shows how innovative the hacker is. IITk website was soon brought back to its normal form as the authorities came to know about it but my classmate Sudhanshu was quick to take its screenshot. Thank You to him.

NOTE: My intention behind posting this article is just to show to Internet users the innovation the hacker used and by no means I am challenging the name of IITs which I know will always remain the best. I love IITs.

Great Collection Of 17 Firefox Extensions For Smoother Blogging

2007-06-07T05:59:00.000+05:30

The best thing about firefox is that it always has solution to your surfing needs. And when it comes to bloggers, who need to be connected to internet with all kinds of services, firefox is a boon. People at lifehack.org have compiled a great list of 17 firefox extensions which are in some way or the other a must for bloggers.

Lets get going . . .

Collecting

Google Notebook - Highlight the content you want to save, Note it with this extension. You can organize different ‘notebooks’ with their own sections. Each note will have a link back to the original website.
Session Manager - Great for doing research and rounding up a few sources. Save the session of tabs so you can come back to them later.
coComment - Keep tracks of comments you’ve left on other websites. This is particularly useful if the comment section is providing more resources than the actual post content.
Speak It - Have articles read out to you so you can do the dishes while researching. Not to be used while at the computer - speed reading = productivity. This extension uses the Microsoft TTS Engine.
DocuFarm - This is a cool extension that previews word, PDFs etc within Firefox. It comes with a search, which you can also use to search PDFs!

Writing

Scribefire - Performancing.com’s popular split-browser blog editor. Multiple blog management, categories and simple source editing. FTP Uploads are available but buggy. No good image support.
Deepest Sender - Very similar to ScribeFire, these two extensions lack greater features like image uploading, time-stamp editing and compatible tagging. Both are very easy to set up.
Resizable Text Area - If you stick with your regular blog editor, such as Wordpress, this extension comes in handy to resize the text area quickly and freely.
Spellbound & Google Toolbar - Inline spell-check, ala Microsoft Word. Use the extension or Google Toolbar’s built-in spell-checker. Both work great. Superseded by Firefox 2’s built in spell check.
Tabinta - turns the Tab Button to a text editor spacing tab rather than cycling through the web forms. Only interacts with the text area, otherwise does the regular Firefox tabbing.
Split Browser - Great when copy and pasting content and URLs, this extension makes it easy to split any tab any which way. Put your editor in a ’sidebar’ and continue surfing the other tabs in the other pane.
Copy Plain Text - This is a can’t-live-without extension for me. When I copy text, I don’t want any of the original site’s formating, links or text-link-ads to be copied over as well. Just the text. That’s what this extension does.
Copy As HTML Link - Use this extension in conjunction with Copy Plain Text to create links for your posts. Only make links when you want with the text you want.

Images

Web Developer - Other than View Source and those functions, Web Developer is great for getting image information like size etc. If a site is making it hard to get access to their images, use the View Image Information button to get all the images and their links. Respect copyright.
Snagit - to use with the SnagIt image capture application, this extension just makes it easy to start grabbing screenshots while still in Firefox.
Picnik - this web based app trumps SnagIt in many respects. With the Picnik extension you can grab a screenshot of the visible page, or the entire page, with one click. The same goes with any images on the web, including a button at Flickr.com.

Picnik is also a very good image editor. I don’t use anything else to edit images for articles. You can take any photo, from your computer, Flickr or Picasso account, or anywhere on the web, and start editing without downloading anything to your computer.

You want to add any of your own. Do comment and I will follow up.

WARNING: Yahoo Messenger 8.0 & Above Highly Vulnerable To Attacks

2007-06-06T20:48:00.000+05:30

Yahoo messenger, the most famous chatting messenger available is again providing open vector for hackers to gain access to your system and that too with minimal user interaction.

Date Reported:
June 5, 2007

Vendor:
Yahoo, Inc

Description:
Multiple flaws exist within Yahoo! Messenger which allow for remote execution of arbitrary code with minimal user interaction.

Severity:
High

Remote Code Execution:
Yes

Software Affected:
Yahoo! Messenger 8.x

Operating Systems Affected:
Windows

Status:
June 5, 2007: Vulnerability reported to vendor

Reporter:
eEye Digital Security

UPDATE: [June 10, 2007]
Yahoo has has pushed out a fix to plug the bugs found. Go get them.

Related:
IE7 & FireFox SCARY Vulnerability
Linux Kernel Vulnerability
Adobe Vulnerability
MS Office Vulnerability

Technorati Tags: yahoo messenger vulnerability, yahoo, hack

Microsoft Does NOT Owe The Word "Vista"

2007-06-05T06:07:00.000+05:30

Microsoft is in danger of losing its grip on Windows Vista. Well, in all fairness, the operating system's base code is a Microsoft intellectual property, but things are not so clear when it comes to the name of the company's latest Windows platform. Apparently Microsoft does not own the "Vista" name and trademark. A Frenchman, Philippe Gildas claims that he has all the rights on the "Vista" trademark and not Microsoft. Therefore the Redmond Company should abandon using Vista as reference to its operating system.

Gildas revealed that he had registered the Vista trademark four years before Microsoft launched the operating system to the general public. The Frenchman plans to open a media outlet for the elderly under the Vista brand.

"I deposited the mark with the autumn 2003 in all the fields of the intellectual property of ‘entertainment’, and of the media: out of press, in TV, on the Web, etc Indeed, my chain ‘Vista’, that I launch on CanalSat and all the câblo-operators on November 15, is not a project left the hat," Gildas explained as cited by PC Inpact. "One had already tried the blow four years ago. That loupé because we were not ready, but we had deposited the name"

It is hard to believe that after spending in excess of $500 million on the Windows Vista Wow marketing campaign and associating the three terms for the consumers, Microsoft will just roll over and play nice. Far from it in fact. The Redmond Company will look to silence Gildas as soon as possible, and it will go to court if necessary. Essentially, by the time Gildas could win an intellectual property infringement lawsuit against Microsoft for the use of the Vista trademark, the operating system could already be out of commission.

Gildas is not shy about threatening Microsoft with lawsuit, because the global launch of Windows Vista has interfered with his plans of opening the Vista TV channel. Microsoft has a similar precedent of the Forefront brand and the Redmond Company has failed to indicate signs of amiable settlement on behalf of the plaintiff. And of course that Microsoft can also argue that the operating system is labelled Windows Vista, and as such, trademark infringement would be harder to prove.

Related:
Awesome Microsoft Ad For MS Outlook 2007 Customers
Disable Vista's UAC But Be Cautious
12 Hidden Windows Vista Network Tools
Vista Might Choke Internet

Technorati Tags: microsoft does not owe vista

Google Desktop Vulnerable To Attack

2007-06-05T05:53:00.000+05:30

Security researcher Robert Hansen, aka RSnake, has published details of a new attack on Google Desktop. Basically, Hansen found a man-in-the-middle attack, this time placing an attacker between Google and someone launching a desktop search query. From this position, the attacker is able to manipulate the search results and possibly take control of other programs on the desktop.

The attack scenario plays out like this: a user of Google Desktop makes a search query that is intercepted by an attacker. The attacker then injects Javascript that creates an invisible IFrame on the target URL page as well as makes the IFrame follow the user's mouse; the user is unaware. The attacker then injects more code to position a second query inside the user mouse IFrame. As the second query executes, the attacker then forces a meta-refresh to reload the page, and that forces Google Desktop to load as well as any program indexed by Google Desktop the attacker may desire. When user clicks the evil Google Desktop query, the malicious program executes.

Hansen writes: "This should drive home the point that deep integration between the desktop and the Web is not a good idea" since Google's site is unencrypted and therefore can be subverted by an attacker. But Hansen notes there are two caveats here: one, you need to have Google Desktop installed, and two, the attacker must be sophisticated enough to launch a man-in-the-middle attack upon you.

To illustrate the attack, Hansen provided an online video demonstration.

Grafpup 2.0, A Distro For Digital Artists, Available Now

2007-06-04T05:51:00.000+05:30

Grafpup 2.00 final was released yesterday around the world and it brings bleeding edge features such as:

Linux kernel 2.6.20.2
A revamped package management with dependency resolution
The Gimp 2.3.14
Cinepaint 0.22 with the cvs Ufraw plug-in
A brand new control panel
cdrkit replaces cdrtools
Openbox replaces IceWM

I think the most exciting feature in this release, is the Openbox WM, which is a standards compliant, fast, light-weight, extensible window manager. Openbox works with your applications, and makes your desktop easier to manage. It is fully functional as a stand-alone working environment, or can be used as a drop-in replacement for the default window manager in the GNOME or KDE desktop environments.

The Grafpup team setup a very nice repository, with more than 1100 applications, from which you can install very easily other desktop environments like XFCE4 or KDE. This version of Grafpup comes in three editions: with Opera, with SeaMonkey and with Dillo web browsers.

Grafpup Linux is a desktop operating system which provides a complete and stable workflow for digital imaging professionals and graphic artists in a very compact package.

Grafpup Linux runs very well as a Live CD, but with persistent storage for your data, and a nice package management system to add on the software. When running the Live CD, you can also install extra packages that will remain after reboot.

Of course, Grafpup Linux can also be installed quite easily onto a USB thumbdrive or your hard disk, and it will run equally well. Grafpup Linux is based on the structure of Puppy Linux, which is an amazing distribution created from scratch by Barry Kauler. The total size of the Grafpup Linux Live CD is around 100 MB, and the whole operating system loads into RAM for amazing performance.

Download Grafpup Linux now from Softpedia.

Related:
Linux Kernel IPv6 Sockets DoS Vulnerability
IBM Not Ready To Say Oracle's Linux Compatible
Mac OS X & Linux Bite The Dust - Windows Vista Did It!

[via softpedia news]
Technorati Tags: grafpup 2.0

Disable Vista's UAC But Be Cautious

2007-06-04T05:24:00.000+05:30

User Access Control (UAC) in Vista is sometimes headache for users even when it gives you the "extra" security which you want. On the other side its a different case that you do need the third party softwares to keep your heart beat running. UAC is a frustration when you are reorganizing your files/folders or installing new applications. Disabling UAC in such case requires you to restart your computer. A headache again!

Using TweakUAC you can actually temporarily disable your UAC prompt for the time when you install new applications or clear your unwanted folders in program files. You do not need to install TweakUAC rather give it administrator privileges via UAC prompt and then you get to see this window:

Instead of choosing the first option which will completely disable UAC, choose second option. Quiet Mode will make UAC go to sleep only for administrators. Vista will inform you that UAC is disabled in system tray. Now go on and complete your work.

But remember that doing this makes your computer open to attacks so you should attempt this step very carefully and for short period only.

TweakUAC website

Technorati Tags: TweakUAC, disable vista's UAC

Be A Orkut Watch Dog. Read Everyone's Scrap Without Visiting There Profiles

2007-06-03T18:10:00.000+05:30

Orkut is an Internet social network service run by Google and named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. It claims to be designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. Similar to Friendster and MySpace, Orkut goes a step further by permitting the creation of easy-to-setup simple forums (called "communities") of users. Since October 2006 , Orkut permits users to create accounts without an invitation.

Scraps in orkut are messages which people send to one another. To read someones scraps one needs to first visits that persons profile. In this case the persons whose profile was visited comes to know about this.

This small trick helps you to read any ones scraps as RSS and that too without logging into orkut. So now you can read scraps of your friends and foes without letting them sense that you read there scraps. And you also do not need to log into orkut for this.

See the URL given below:
http://www.indian-tv.com/orkut.php?uid={uid}

Now when you visit someones profile (might be yours) you will notice that the URL in the address bar contains a long number called uid. Replace {uid} in above URL with the uid of profile URL.

This URL will work in netvibes.com (as I haven't tested it on other platforms). If you are familiar with concept of RSS feed readers and netvibes then you just need to use the URL which contains profile uid as the feed URL in netvibes.

If you are not familiar with netvibes then read on.

Visit netvibes and register as you normally register in other websites. Once done click on "Add a feed" link in left column. Paste the URL which you created above into the address bar as shown in image below and click "Add".

Voila! That particular persons last 10 scraps are listed within seconds. Explore netvibes and the small window which contains the scraps. You can this way see as many profile URLs as much you want all in netvibes without actually logging into orkut.

This method could also be used to atleast read scraps in networks which have blocked orkut.

Did you like the trick. Do me a small favour. Copy the URL given below and paste it into "Add a feed" as you did for orkut link.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/webtechlog

This will let you reed my blog articles as RSS. Enjoy!

[RSS script via ngcoders]

Technorati tags: orkut scraps as RSS

Taiwan's miCard Chosen As Global Memory Card Standard

2007-06-03T15:17:00.000+05:30

A Taiwanese research institute has produced a new global memory card standard, called the miCard (Multiple Interface Card), designed to work in smaller consumer gadgets such as digital cameras, mobile phones and any device with a USB plug, which are common on PCs.

The purpose of the card is to make transferring pictures, songs and other data between gadgets and PCs easier. The card won the stamp of approval from the MultiMedia Card Association yesterday and is expected to be available globally starting in the third quarter.

Users will not only benefit from the versatility of the card, but also its speed. The miCard will transfer data at 480Mbit/sec, and throughput will improve over time. The first miCards will be able to store 8GB of data, but the maximum capacity is expected to top out around 2,048GB. The compatibility with both USB and MMC slots means most users won't need separate card readers anymore. MMC cards fit most consumer electronics, while USB connections are built into a wide range of IT hardware, including laptops, desktops, printers and home entertainment gear.

So far, 12 Taiwanese companies have signed on to manufacture the miCard, according to its inventor, the Industrial Technology Research Institute. Officials expect local companies to save $40 million in licensing fees thanks to the card, in addition to profiting from sales. Taiwanese companies will not have to pay royalties to make miCards or related technology.

The companies already committed to making miCards include A-Data Technology Inc., Asustek Computer Inc., BenQ Corp., Carry Computer Eng. Co., C-One Technology Corp., DBTel Inc., Power Digital Card Co. and RiChip Inc. The specifications for the cards will be made available in soon.

Technorati tags: miCard

The Art of ‘Ware - a great read, now in PDF

2007-06-02T23:48:00.000+05:30

I came across the And Still I Persist blog some time ago and it’s become a welcome addition to my aggregator, providing some great insights and opinions about the art and science of software development and IT. Bruce Webster, one of the three authors contributing to the blog, has crafted a very enjoyable series of in-depth posts titled The Art of ‘Ware, a treatise on software development based on the principles laid out in Sun Tzu’s Art of War. He’s just made a PDF version available for offline reading and I highly recommend it.

[via ZDnet]
Technorati Tags: art of ware in pdf

The Ultimate Reset Button

2007-06-02T23:36:00.000+05:30

As David Bradley, a designer of the original IBM PC said "I may have invented Control-Alt-Delete, but Bill Gates made it famous". Actually before Windows went mainstream computers had fairly small reset buttons, but with the advent of Windows came the practise of frequent resetting. Of course there was Ctrl + Alt + Del combo but for the dreaded Kernel 32 error for Windows 98 you have no option but to bend down and find the puny reset button. Putting an end to the misery is this reset button which looks more like a mushroom straight from Mario land. Connection is very simple as it uses just two wires. The best part is when you have lost your cool with the blue screen of death, just hit the button with your fist to reboot.

[via newlaunches]
Technorati Tags: reset button

Huge wind machine to simulate category three hurricanes

2007-06-02T23:24:00.000+05:30

It will huff, and puff, and blow the house in — but only for research purposes.

Just in time for the beginning of the hurricane season, the University of Florida (UF) engineers have built the world’s largest portable hurricane wind simulator. Mounted on a trailer, the device is composed of eight 5-foot-tall industrial fans powered by four marine diesel engines. This simulator can produce winds of up to 130 mph, the equivalent of a category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. It was designed to learn about how hurricanes damage homes and how to make them more hurricane-resistant.

UF civil and coastal engineers plan to use the simulator to blast vacant homes with winds of up to 130 mph — Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale — and high-pressure water jets that mimic wind-driven torrential rain.

The goal: to learn more about exactly how hurricanes damage homes, and how to modify them to best prevent that damage.

So next time you feel like hurricanes coming, be rest assured its just simulated ;)

technorati tags: portable hurricane simulators

Mac OS X and Linux Bite the Dust – Windows Vista Did It!

2007-06-01T23:21:00.001+05:30

40 millions of Windows Vista sold licenses later, Mac OS X and Linux bite the dust, and the latest Microsoft operating system is directly responsible. At the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2007 in Los Angeles in mid May 2007, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates revealed that in the first 100 days of availability the company had shipped approximately 40 million Vista licenses.

Must Read:
Mac OS X vs Vista. The Fight Goes On

With an impressive rate of adoption Windows Vista is right on track to "become the standard version of Windows" as Gates put it. Microsoft's Chairman and Co-founder also took a swing at rivals by claiming that just in the first five weeks on the market Windows Vista has surpassed the installed base of all other alternative operating systems.

Recent data made available by Market Share by Net Applications comes to confirm Gates' claims for Vista. According to the Market Share statistics, Vista now controls no less than 3.74% of the operating system market. In this context, Linux was the first road-kill produced by Vista in the very first month on the shelves. However, in May, Linux's market share dropped to 0.70% from 0.80% in April 2007.

Market Share by Net Applications separated in its statistics Apple's market share according to platform. In this regard, both MacIntel and MacOS have experienced minuscule growth from April to May. MacOS jumped from 3.89% to 3.95%, just 0.06%, and MacIntel managed an un-spectacular growth from 2.32% to 2.51%.

The superb market performance delivered by Windows Vista has already led to an adoption rate superior to both Mac OS X and Linux put together. Before Vista was launched to consumers at the end of January, there had been voices forecasting the fact that Microsoft was alienating users with the operating system and that Apple and Linux would rip the benefits. Nothing could be further from the truth judging by what Vista has showed so far.

Related:
12 Hidden Windows Vista Network Tools
Checking For TCP/IP Connection Problems In Vista
Vista Software Compatibility List
1500 Page Vista Tutorial By Microsoft
Hidden Private Character Editor In XP
Vista May Choke Internet

[thanks softpedia for the great article]
Technorati Tags: Vista wins agains Mac OS X and Linux, linux, Mac OS X, Vista

AMD Selling Intel CPU As If It Hates Its Own Impressive Products

2007-06-01T22:48:00.000+05:30

Presenting "The King Of Blunders". AMD has lost its brains. The ever heating competition between AMD and Intel has turned AMD's brains upside down. See what they are displaying in there 'own' website.

You can now learn about a Asus laptop with a mobile Core 2 Duo CPU inside it directly from AMD's website.

Now this is what we call generosity. This was unbelievable for me but its true. AMD is preferring Intel products.

Such a blunder from Intel's biggest competitors? Looks like AMD wants Intel to buy AMD and this might be nice way to impress Intel ;)

'Print Button' Specifically For Blogs by HP

2007-06-01T22:26:00.001+05:30

At HP, the paperless Web is a myth to rival the paperless office.

HP held a one-day Imaging and Printing Conference in New York City on Wednesday, announcing that it will collaborate with blogs to add "print" capabilities, in addition to the "print" functions already built into browsers.

HP also announced that its Tabblo subsidiary, which HP acquired in March, would develop a Web toolkit to make it easier to print content from Web sites.

What HP calls "Print 2.0" is made up of three principles: to make it easier to print from websites, such as blogs and travel sites, and bring new printing capabilities to online properties; to extend the company's digital content creation and publishing platforms – for example, Snapfish and Logoworks – across customer segments spanning from consumers to enterprises; and to deliver a digital printing platform that increases print speeds and lowers the cost of printing for high-volume commercial markets.

"Today, we're introducing a new era in printing. We're redefining what it means to print and further accelerating the transformation from analog to digital printed pages," said Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president of the company's Imaging and Printing Group, in a statement. "In today's world of 'mashed media' – words, pictures, video, songs – the question becomes 'How will people publish this content?' Print 2.0 is the answer. This vision centers on empowering our customers to create and consume their content, their way."

On June 29, HP will release a plugin to allow the company's Movable Type blogging software to add "print" buttons to their pages. On the same day, the Tabblo template will become available, to allow users to pick and choose content off of a Web page to print.

I am eagerly waiting for a similar blogger feature.

The Camera Behind Google's Street View

2007-06-01T21:47:00.000+05:30

Everyone by now knows about Google's Street View feature in Google Maps. If you ask my views about the penetration of Google Maps, I do not know if I am terrified or delighted. More delighted as it does not feature my house yet!

But to reveal the real thing do you know Google used the camera shown in above image for its street view images. Its an awesome 11-sided camera which works best for the purpose. And just to make things more clear it wasn't Google itself which took all the images. Immersive Media was the company which was part of the project.

The Google van has higher resolution than Immersive Media's system. Compare this image of New York with this one of San Francisco.

[via]

Technorati Tags: camera behind google street view, google

Mac OS X vs Windows Vista, The Battle Continues

2007-05-31T22:24:00.000+05:30

With so many articles published under the same heading, I need to be different to glue you till the end. Right? OKAY then, read on to learn if the WOW factor of Vista and the new advertising campaigns of Mac OS X were actually showing you the real picture.

OS X is facing the lack of support for Macs by different Internet service providers. That is sad but true. A major reaon why Macs still are not covering that bigger market as Microsoft does.

But lets start comparing point by point…

Talking user easiness, one of the most important parts of the battle, it’s a win win situation for both.

Agreed that Vista does not crash very often but the applications that run in it are prone to hang as ever! Why ‘minimize’ ‘maximize’ ‘close’ buttons look identical until you hover over them in OS X? Why one is asked to click ‘Start’ button in Vista when he/she wants to stop using the computer? Why one cannot resize application windows in OS X? What was the need to bring in Flip 3D in Vista when Alt-Tab is the most convenient way to find the right application window? Why in OS X we have to press Apple plus backspace keys to delete files instead of just pressing delete key?

Oh, and where are the OS X games? And why does Front Row feel like the poor, backwards relation of Windows Media Center?

The issue of security gives an edge to Macs with the UNIX amour supporting it. The default setting of an Apple PC is such that it has all its ports “closed”. Printer sharing, remote login, FTP and many such daily use services are switched of by default. This minimizes the vectors available for a hackers to penetrate a Mac.

Vista on the other hand tries to deliver a lot easier interface for its users along with heavy security. But when it comes to making things easy for your customers you have to, by default, leave some loop holes. This is where Vista looses. Microsoft recommends you update its main protective shield every week, but with so many of spywares being released how long would these updates keep you on the safer side. This ofcourse is a debatable topic. Plus you need to find some 3rd party virus protection to keep your heart beating. Vista provides the out of box solution but it isn’t enough for heart patients.

And with more number of people experimenting with Vista than do with Apple, Microsoft is bound to have more number of negatives in there favor.

When it comes to performance OS X initially was no where near its counterparts due to its inbound love for PowerPC processor. But with OS X falling in love “again”, this time with Intel, battle for performance is evenly matched.

Video encoding, image processing, ultimate graphics, mind blowing sounds and many more such points are NOT too different in either of the two.

But lets get to the gaming world. Lets talk about 3rd party applications. Be it games or the most wanted 3rd party tools, companies prefer to first launch there software for Microsoft and than later think about OS X. It’s the reach of Microsoft, or one can say the publicity (negative & positive) of Microsoft, which gives it this advantage. And do not forget Direct X 10 which will ultimately be accepted by everyone in coming future.

The larger user base seems to provide Microsoft an easy edge over Apple this time.

Who is more social? Vista is. It is malleable, easy to get on with and not afraid of trying new things, such as experimenting with new form factors. If it fails, users can seek the advice of almost any nerd in land as everybody knows what makes Microsoft tick.

OS X doesn't mind losing the larger quantity of users. It dose not care if people do not love it, Steve Jobs does and will keep doing that.

OS X has that different touch in it but Vista has fame & the user base, in short, the easy path to success as compared to OS X. It’s simple!

Technorati tags: Mac OS X vs Vista

Not Google But Kevin Ham Owes The Internet

2007-05-30T21:39:00.000+05:30

And here we are, the bloggers, surfing the Internet daily to find stories which can bring in readers so as to gain better ranking. That in order will bring better ad revenue.

Huh, this guy Kevin Ham trained as a family doctor, he put off medicine after discovering the riches of the Web. Since 2000 he has quietly cobbled together a portfolio of some 300,000 domains that, combined with several other ventures, generate an estimated $70 million a year in revenue. (Like all his financial details, Ham would neither confirm nor deny this figure.)

When Ham wants a domain, he leans over and quietly instructs an associate to bid on his behalf. He likes wedding names, so his guy lifts the white paddle and snags Weddingcatering.com for $10,000. Greeting.com is not nearly as good as the plural Greetings.com, but Ham grabs it anyway, for $350,000.
Ham is a devout Christian, and he spends $31,000 to add Christianrock.com to his collection, which already includes God.com and Satan.com. When it's all over, Ham strolls to the table near the exit and writes a check for $650,000. It's a cheap afternoon.

Read his full story here as I am in NO mood to deliver a short summary of this guys venture who earns via yahoo and Google ads with no real content being delivered. HELL!

Technorati Tags: domain typo

Search Google "Without Ads"

2007-05-30T19:08:00.000+05:30

Now this is what we call "Do No Evil!" principle of Google. They show true honesty friends. Just got to this blog and then went on to search for same on Internet. Yeah many have published about the video of how to search Google without any ads getting displayed. But for those who are still unaware of this here goes the trick.

Use this URL instead of the general google.com to do your search without ads. Do the search and see the result yourself. No Ads! Agreed that Google Ads are not the real hurdle as they are well divided with search queries but still if you feel uncomfortable with ads. Google without ads is for you.

[via]

Technorati tags: google without ads

Is Google X Being Re-tested?

2007-05-30T18:08:00.000+05:30

As of wikipedia Google X was a project released by Google Labs on March 15, 2005 and rescinded a day later. It consisted of the traditional Google search bar, but it was made to look like the Dockuser interface feature of Apple's Mac OS X operating system .The rumor is that it was pulled because of a threatened lawsuit by Apple. You can have a look of its look alike here with the details to be found in this blog.

Now Google Korea seems to be gearing up to do some more experiments with Google X kind of format running online or might be I am little late in finding with what every one already knows. Whatever be the reason, here goes the Google Korea link which is exactly like Google X!

Your comments are invited . . .

[via]

technorati tags: google x

Fullscreen In Firefox With No Unwanted Buttons

2007-05-29T21:54:00.000+05:30

It is general experience that when you press F11 in firefox for full screen browsing, mostly when you want to take a screenshot, the extra buttons like refresh, stop etc do not leave the screen. They seem to be in love with you! But there is a way to hide those buttons without using any extension.

Just right click on the toolbar > customise. Then create new toolbar and drag all you need into the new bar and untick the navigation and bookmarks bars so they are hidden. Now you still have all the same controls in the new bar and when you hit f11 you have full screen simple! Hope that saves people filling up there memory with more useless extensions.

12 Hidden Windows Vista Network Tools

2007-05-29T11:34:00.000+05:30

Windows Vista delivers an impressive line up of network tools that can be used to keep the operating system connectivity on a short leash. The total of 12 command-line tools can be used to manage all aspects of Vista networking. Users will be able not only to closely monitor the networking activity of the platform, but also repair network connections. The utilities are not new to Windows Vista, having survived in the operating system from previous Windows versions. Here is the complete list in alphabetical order:

getmac – this tool will enable you to display the MAC addresses for network adapters on a system. The Media Access Control (MAC) address for the network card can be accessed both on the local computer and on a network.
hostname – not sure about what the name of your machine is on the network? Just type hostname and hit enter.
ipconfig – according to Microsoft's own description, the tool is designed to display by default only the IP address, subnet mask and gateway for each adapter associated with the TCP/IP. But in addition to enumerating the TCP/IP network configuration parameters users can also refresh the DHCP and DNS settings.
nslookup – is meant to be used according to Domain Name System.
net – is a general tool with commands covering a broad range of functionality.
netstat – displays protocol statistics and TCP/IP network connections.
netsh – the command-line tool enables Vista users to both view and alter the network configuration settings of computers.
pathping – is a middle solution which bundles the functionality delivered by traceroute and ping.
nbtstat – a tool that will display protocol statistics and current TCP/IP connections using NetBIOS over TCP/IP.
Ping – a complete description of the ping utility can be found here.
route – manipulates network routing tables.
tracert – users can implement this command-line tool to identify connectivity problems between the local computer and a network address.

When using command-line tools in Windows Vista it is healthy to remember to launch the command prompt window with administrative privileges. In order to do so, enter "cmd" in the Search box under the Vista Start Menu and press Ctrl + Shift + Enter to launch the process with elevated privileges.

Related:
Vista Software Compatibility List
1500 Page Vista Tutorial By Microsoft
Hidden Private Character Editor In XP
Vista May Choke Internet

Technorati Tags: 12 vista network tools
Source: softpedia

Time To Migrate To IPv6

2007-05-22T16:17:00.000+05:30

The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) has taken a resolution that they will take measures to save IPv4 addresses and encourage use of IPv6 addresses or migration to IPv6 addresses. It should be worth noting that as the IPv4 space decreases people will keep trying to obtain few of them by hook or by crook (cases of providing false info to obtain IPv4 addresses have been regularly seen over the Internet). So the above step of ARIN could be helpful in such sensitive circumstances.

ARIN is the organization responsible for giving out IP addresses in North America. Four similar organizations serve Latin America and the Caribbean (LACNIC), Africa (AfriNIC), Asia and the Pacific (APNIC), and Europe along with the rest of the world (RIPE NCC). ARIN's Board of Trustees consists mainly of people elected from ARIN's membership, which consists of any organization (or person) that cares about what ARIN does and can spare $500 a year. As such, it's not unexpected for the board to attempt to further the common good by promoting IPv6.

Most people and organizations connected to the Internet, be they consumers, ISPs, or content companies, are much more interested in what's in their best interests. By and large, they're happy to stick with IPv4. Despite the best efforts of organizations like ARIN, the simple fact is that, compared to IPv4, IPv6 gives you access to very little content and very few users. So far, nobody has been able to get past this chicken-and-egg issue, although a The Great IPv6 Experiment proposes to change this by giving away free access to "10 gigabytes of the most popular 'adult entertainment,'" but only over IPv6.

Following chart explain well how distribution of addresses progresses at ARIN.

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Preview Tabs In Firefox

2007-05-19T06:45:00.000+05:30

Use Tab Scope 0.1.2 to preview and navigate tab contents through popup. Shows a popup on tabs and enables you to preview and navigate tab contents through popup.

Major features are:
* Real-time preview of tab contents
* Navigate(Back / Forward / Reload / Stop) through popup
* Scroll pages or frames in preview with mouse wheel
* Click links or buttons directly in preview

For more info, please see http://www.xuldev.org/tabscope/

NOTE: Tab Scope doesn't work normally on Mac OS X.

Works with: Firefox: 1.5 – 3.0a5

Install Now

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Related:
20 FireFox Extensions
Open Firefox Search Result In New Tab
Run Google Talk In Firefox Sidebar
Speed Up Internet With FireFox

Technorati tags: preview tabs in firefox

Google Behaving Awkwardly

2007-05-13T19:16:00.000+05:30

[click to enlarge]

LINK: (click here to reach that awkward google search page)

Some user used this URL to get to my blog. The search query is fine and my blog is there at the top in the top 10 queries. But do u see the image above? Its all gone awkward. Use the link shown above and see it yourself. And if someone knows it then please tell me what is this?

Check more bugs discovered at CompuWorld here.

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Related:
Hidden Google Pages - Awesome
10 Google Myths

technorati tags: google error