Image via Wikipedia

Google had retired its “Google Browser Sync for Firefox” long back. It was quite expected with the Chrome coming into the playing field. Google has been constantly updating its browser(at least the developer channel) which is gong to be the basis for its future operating system dreams.

The recent dev build (4.0.201.1) released, has bookmark synchronisation which syncs your browsers bookmarks to Google Docs (read Google Drive) and not Google Bookmarks as one would expect.

So do you want to try the new feature ? First join Google Chrome’s dev channel, which includes a buggier, feature loaded and less polished version of Google Chrome.

Start Chrome with the “–enable-sync” flag. You will find a option in the Tools menu called “Sync my bookmarks…”. Login into your Google Account and the process should start immediately.

The synced bookmarks are placed in Google Docs in “My Folders”.  This interface could be a precursor to GDrive which could act as online storage device.

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• Bookmarks Here, Bookmarks There, Bookmarks Everywhere
• Google Chrome: Now with Bookmark Syncing (for the Brave) (mashable.com)
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• Google Chrome Adds Bookmark Sync Support (techie-buzz.com)
• Google Docs, Slowly Morphing into Google Drive (mt-soft.com.ar)
• And Google Said, Let There Be Chrome Bookmark Sync (techcrunch.com)
• Google Docs hints at GDrive… maybe (downloadsquad.com)
• How to Enable Bookmark Syncing in Chrome, Without an Add-on [Google Chrome] (lifehacker.com)

Are you tired of Google knowing your every move, every thought, want, purchase, opinion? Then Google’s new opt-out village is for you…as long as you know how to farm and bury a dead body…

Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village

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Space Sunrises

Visit Six Revisions to download the wallpapers

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For the few, who need to bypass the standard DNS settings or who develop and manage websites and need to edit hosts file are quite stuck up with the UAC in Micro$oft’s Windows Vista.

Here are the few ways to edit the hosts file in Windows Vista, which I came across while googling for the solution.

For non-frequent edits :

1. Open Notepad with Administrative privileges by clicking Start, All Programs,Accessories, and then right-click Notepad and select to open as Administrator.
2. Now that Notepad is open with Administrative privileges browse to (C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc) in Notepad and open the hosts file.
3. Now you can edit and save the hosts file.

For frequent editing

Here’s how to create a shortcut on your desktop and easily open your hosts file with Notepad and edit it.

1. Send a shortcut to Notepad to your desktop by right-clicking Notepad in the start menu and selecting send to desktop.
2. Right-click the shortcut to Notepad on your desktop and select properties.
3. Click the advanced button near the bottom of the shortcut tab and check off run as administrator. Click OK in the advanced properties window.
4. Replace “ %SystemRoot%\system32\notepad.exe “ with ” %SystemRoot%\system32\notepad.exe C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts “ in the target box. Click OK in the properties window to save the changes.
5. Now all you have to do is open that shortcut to open your hosts file with Notepad with administrative privileges.

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There is a lot of talk going around, about the privacy issues in Internet. But no one seems to have pressed the panic button yet. There is always a possibility of a government or an organization with an evil intent to gather as much as data as possible about Internet users. A anonymous proxy can protect users from the big brother from knowing your net activities from their ISP‘s, it is of no use if they are able to get it from the user’s web browsers.

“Start Panic” is a website that basically shows the proof of concept of how websites can find out about anyone’s browsing history, just by adding some scripts. Although this site requires a button to be pressed for it to gather the browsing history, some other site can be using a code that can do it automatically. Start Panic aims to raise public awarness for this privcay issue.

This issue is little alarming for the reason that it is cross browser. It works in all major web browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer and Opera. Eventhough this issue has been around for a while from 2007, none of the browsers seem to have noted or tried to fix this issue. Another alarming factor is that normal users do not clear their browser history or cookies regularly. This makes it even more a bigger privacy issue.

For now usage of add-ons like NoScript etc will protect you.

To visit the site click here.

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A decision to dismiss appeals against the controversial fast-track approval of a Microsoft document format has provoked six members of global standards-setting body ISO to question ISO’s relevance. Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela had appealed against ISO’s stamp of approval for Microsoft Office Open XML (OOXML), an endorsement likely to help the software giant win more public-sector contracts.

A significant minority of national standards bodies had voted against approving the Microsoft format, which is an alternative to the open-source Open Document Format that has been a published ISO standard since 2006. But ISO, together with the International Electrotechnical Commission, decided earlier this month that those appeals were not worth pursuing, meaning OOXML will soon become an ISO standard, provided no new appeals are lodged.

This weekend, the state IT organizations of Brazil, South Africa, Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba and Paraguay published a declaration saying they were no longer confident that ISO would be a vendor-neutral organization.

“Whereas in the past it has been assumed that an ISO/IEC standard should automatically be considered for use within government, clearly this position no longer stands,” they wrote on the South African representative’s site (www.raffee.co.za).

“The bending of the rules to facilitate the fast-track processing… remains a significant concern to us,” they said, referring to a process many parties had complained was too fast and not transparent enough for such a complex format.

Microsoft lost a first vote on OOXML, which is opposed by advocates of open-source software that can be freely shared and modified, but won a second vote after a week-long ballot resolution meeting to discuss the 6,000-page specifications.

ISO is a non-governmental organization made up of the national standards of 157 countries. It sprang up in the 1940s in response to demand for standard specifications for materials needed to rebuild the infrastructure of war-shattered countries.

You can help the effort to oppose this unfair practise by signing an online petition here

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One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.

There was no “Download Day”, no server downtime, no record to set… It all happened without much fanfare. Just a small statement in the most visited page in internet. “New! Download Chrome (BETA) – the new browser from Google”

Google calls it Chrome, People call it “Google OS”, Open Source Community will have its “Chromium”, IE would call it “Nightmare come true”, Opera would cry “copy cat”, Apple would say “Just another Safari“, Privacy Advocates will cry “Foul”, Some call it start of “Web 3.0″ or “Web 3.0 beta”, FireFox is just recovering from the “shock” and I just call it “cool“…

Imagine the simplicity and minimalistic colours of Google in a browser and you got “Chrome”. The way you had imagined and used tabs are going to change. The tabs are going to the top floor instead of being below the address bar. You can still switch tabs! You can kill the tab from the tab strip or from the process manager. When you kill the tab, you see a “sad tab.” If you reload the page, Google Chrome will even remember the scroll position.

New tab page shows most frequently visited page, most frequent searches, bookmarks, and recently closed tabs. You can choose whether a bookmark strip follows you as you surf (in case you want to save screen space).

Geeks, use the Task Manager to get details about a specific process running in Google Chrome, or to force a misbehaving tab or application to close. You can use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Esc to quickly open the Task Manager. For each active item in Google Chrome, you can monitor the amount of memory taken up, the amount of CPU used, and the network activity (bytes sent and received). To force a misbehaving webpage or application to close in Google Chrome, select the web page, then click the End process button. For those who need to go the extra mile, you have “Stats for Nerds”

More news for the techies, Google Chrome uses WebKit, not a new rendering engine to the web. It renders just like Safari. It multi processes all its tabs with separate threads making it more stable and resource efficient in long run. Chrome uses V8 virtual machine to execute javascript. According to one source, “V8 executes JavaScript much much faster than current technologies.” Chrome is open under a BSD License. The name of the project to open-source Google Chrome is Chromium.

The official Google blog announced the Chrome project being available to general public from today. For now only Windows users. Mac and Linux users watch out for updates. You can also check out the comic book explaining Google Chrome from Google.

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Space and Planet Wallpapers

For those who need a change of that boring wallpaper on your desktop and want to dream about the final frontier…, check out the collection complied at Hongkiat.com. Spice up your desktop with the compilation consisting of nearly 60 great, cool wallpapers covering space and planets. “Go where no man has gone before…“

Absolutely Stunning Space and Planets Wallpapers

Visit Hongkiat.com to download the wallpapers

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The fancy name for this feature is “InPrivate”. When activated, InPrivate won’t store new cookies, but still allows existing cookies to be read. Additionally, new history entries, search queries, form data, passwords and temporary web files will be purged at the end of the internet session. It is basically a step forward from the IE7 tool ‘Delete Browsing History’, which didn’t allow data – such as cookies from often-visited websites – to be retained if the user wanted the option. According to Micro$oft’s IEBlog, the features related with privacy would be

• InPrivate Browsing: This lets you control whether or not IE saves your browsing history, cookies, and other data.
• Delete Browsing History: This helps you control your browsing history after you’ve visited Web sites.
• InPrivate Blocking: This informs you about content that is in a position to observe your browsing history, and allows you to block it. InPrivate Blocking will also warn users of third-party content which gives others information about browsing habits without using cookies, and offer to prevent communication with this type of content.
• InPrivate Subscriptions: This feature allow you to augment the capability of InPrivate Blocking by subscribing to lists of Web sites to block or allow.

So, if you are asking when you can get this amazing kinky feature, the next beta is expected in November by some sources…

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Colour Spectrum Desktop Wallpapers

For those who need a change of that boring wallpaper and need a dash of rainbow in their desktop, check out the collection complied at Hongkiat.com. Spice up your desktop with the compliation consistsing of 30 great, cool wallpapers.

30 Impressive Colour Spectrum and Rainbow Wallpapers

Visit Hongkiat.com to download the wallpapers

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“No software is free from bugs” and that statement holds true for the mighty Firefox too. Yesterday the Mozilla Foundation released Firefox 3.0.1, the first update for Firefox 3.0, patching some of the known vulnerabilities. It mainly addresses several security and stability issues. A update was also released for Firefox 2.0 users upgrading them to 2.0.16.

The two critical patches deal with remote code vulnerabilities and command line URLs spawning tabs when Firefox is not running. MFSA 2008-34 is the first critical patch. It was reported via TippingPoint’s Zero Day Initiative, and centers on issues with Mozilla’s internal CSSValue array data structure. An attacker can create a large number of calls to common CSS objects, triggering a crash of the browser when it attempts to free the CSS object while still in use. The resulting crash could be used to execute code on the system.

The second critical issue comes from Billy Rios, who reported that, “if Firefox is not already running, passing it a command-line URI with pipe (“|”) symbols will open multiple tabs. This URI splitting could be used to launch chrome:i URIs from the command-line, a partial bypass of the fix for MFSA 2005-53 which was intended to block external applications from loading such URIsi,” Mozilla explains. The vulnerability in MFSA 2005-53 remains patched however.

“For example, web browsers normally handle file: URIs themselves, or block them from web content altogether, but this flaw enabled attackers to pass them from another browser into Firefox. In Firefox 2 scripts running from file: URIs can read data from a user’s entire disk, a risk if the attacker could first place a malicious file in a guessable location on the local disk. Rios demonstrated that the so-called “Safari Carpet-bombing vulnerability” could be used for this, as well as other techniques that do not rely on that now-fixed Safari vulnerability,” the advisory added.

Internal testing on Firefox 3.0 also showed that Rios’ research can be combined with various vulnerabilities to trigger code execution. “In Firefox 3 scripts running in local files have limited access to other files, almost entirely mitigating the file: attack. However, combined with a vulnerability which allows an attacker to inject script into a chrome document the above issue could be used to run arbitrary code on a victim’s computer.”

Firefox 3.0.1 Updated

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WordPress 2.6 “Tyner” Released

Yesterday, Matt officially announced the release of WordPress 2.6 codenamed “Tyner” to the blogging community. WordPress release codename’s are named after jazz musicians and continuing with the tradition, 2.6 has been named after McCoy Tyner. It contains many new features that makes WordPress a more powerful  CMS (Content Management System).

One of the most important features of this release is Version Control System which enables Wiki-like tracking of edits similar to Wikipedia. This would be a very handy feature which enables the users to just undo and go back to a previous version of the post.

Another major feature introduced in this version is display of captions alongside the images. The example can be seen in the WordPress logo displayed in top of this post.  [Looks like alignment of captions has an issue. I am not just able to get it aligned]

Theme previews would be loved by any serious WordPress user. It was a long awaited feature. It enables to preview the theme, tweak and correct your mistakes before the whole world sees it.

WordPress uses Gears (previously known as Google Gears), an open source browser extension project started by Google. It is primarily for developers to manage offline storage thus enabling you to get a little extra juice. It maintains a cache or keeps a copy of commonly-used Javascript and CSS files on your computer, which can speed up the loading of some pages by several seconds (they just pop right up!). You can install Gears for Firefox or Internet Explorer, with support for Safari and Opera pending. WP 2.6 only uses the cache concept and the future versions are promised with more features in collaboration with Gears.

Other notable features in this release of WordPress are

• Word Count are displayed in the side bar when writing or editing the posts.
• You can reorder the gallery just by drag and drop.
• Bulk management of plugins. Just enable or disable all plugins in a single click.
• “Press This” bookmarklet which enables you to blog from anywhere just by clicking a boomarklet in your browser.
• More advanced image control enabling easy insertion, resizing.  Also shifting from Flash uploader to the classic uploader is easy.
• Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
• A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions. Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.
• Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.

With all these new features, I decided to jump the bandwagon without having to wait for my Hosting company to update the Fantastico which will help me automatically upgrade my WordPress installation. Now bit Feed is powered by WordPress 2.6

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Visit Hongkiat.com to download the wallpapers

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Pressing [Ctrl]+[Tab], brings up a thumbnail preview of the tabs, and repeated presses of [Tab] proceeds in the order of tab usage. Releasing the [Ctrl] selects the particular Tab window. Holding the [Tab] makes the scroll faster. Press [Shift] to make the scroll in the reverse order.

For those who want to see all the tabs present in the present Firefox session, just press [F4] or the List all Tabs button in the right end of Tab bar to bring up a grid view of all the tabs. There is a filter option also thrown in for the hardcore Tab addicts.

I am using this add-on in Firefox 3 and really recommend all to try it out for yourself. It’s worth the effort.

Download Ctrl-Tab

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