Edmund Liew

Fix: This Nvidia Graphics Driver Is Not Compatiable with This Version of Windows

2018-01-13T20:59:00.002+08:00

It is beyond reasonable doubt that NVidia makes some of the best graphic processing units (GPU) the market has ever seen. For years NVidia has been meeting the needs of video editors, graphic designers, animators, PC gaming enthusiasts and other GPU hungry professions out there. When a user therefore gets an error that “This NVidia graphics driver is not compatible with this version of Windows”, it becomes a cause of panic.
This issue is seen during an attempt to install the NVidia drivers. The end result is that the user is therefore unable to make any good of the NVidia GPU since the drivers will not install. Does this mean that NVidia does not support your version of Windows, or you need another graphics card? Do not panic; if you are going through such a problem, you’ve come to the right place. We will explain why this error occurs, what it means, and how it can be remedied.

Why your NVidia driver is not compatible with your version of Windows

This problem has been reported numerously by Windows 10 users, with Windows 7 users also making an appearance. As the error starts, the drivers you are trying to install are not meant for the current operating system you are running; simple as that. The hardware or the NVidia GPU is not to blame here. This lies squarely between the drivers and your Windows OS.
One reason for this problem is that you might be trying to install a 32 bit driver on a 64 bit operating system, or a 64 bit driver on a 32 bit operating system. Since the architecture of these two systems is different, they need different driver for NVidia to function. These drivers are not interchangeable in any way. Open Direct X Diagnostics to know your operating system you are running (Run > type ‘dxdiag’ > OK > Display)

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The second reason that has been bugging a lot of Windows 10 users lies in the version/build of Windows 10 they are running. NVidia drivers are not supported in any version of Windows before the Windows 10 Threshold 2 version 1511. Infact, the only supported versions are from the Threshold 2 version (1511), Anniversary version (1607) and the Fall Creators version (1703). In terms of builds, the first retail build (build 10240) is not supported. Only builds from 10586 are supported. To check your version of Windows, press Windows Key + R, type ‘Winver’ in the run box, and press enter. The first box shows your version, and the second red box shows your Windows build.
Here is how you can resolve this problem. If the first method does not work for you, try the next method.

Method 1: Uninstall your graphics drivers with DDU and manually download your NVidia drivers for your OS.

DDU (Display Drivers Uninstaller) will help remove any bad drivers that were installed for your NVidia GPU. You must then carefully find the correct NVidia drivers on the GeForce website and install them.
Step 1: Uninstall NVidia graphics using DDU. If you have not installed anything yet, skip this step

Download Display Drivers Uninstaller from here
Run the downloaded file to install DDU
After the installation is complete, open DDU from your start menu
From the drop down menu select your NVIDIA driver
Click on ‘Clean and restart (Highly Recommended)’ to clean the driver. This will restart your PC

Step 2: Find the correct drivers of GeForce manually

PRO TIP: If the issue is with your computer or a laptop/notebook you should try using the Reimage Plus Software which can scan the repositories and replace corrupt and missing files. This works in most cases, where the issue is originated due to a system corruption. You can download Reimage Plus by Clicking Here

Download the first driver in the list that comes up. This is the latest driver available for your GPU for your OS.

Go to the NVidia drivers download page here
In the manual search section, select your graphic card type (e.g. GeForce), select your graphics card series (e.g. series 900 if your graphics card is between 900 – 999 or select series 10 if your card is 1080, 1020 etc.). Select the notebook versions if you are using a laptop.
More importantly, select your operating system e.g. Windows 10 64-Bit or Windows 7 32-Bit. To know which OS you are running, press Windows Key + R to open Run, type ‘dxdiag’ (without quotes) and hit enter. You will see your system information in the ‘System’ tab.
Finally, make sure you select “Recommended/Certified” drivers since ‘Beta’ drivers are unstable and might not work.
Click ‘Start Search’ to begin your search
After the download is complete, run the file and install your drivers. Make sure you perform a clean install by checking ‘Perform clean install’ in the NVidia installation window.
Restart your PC

Method 2: Update or upgrade your version of Windows.

To check your version of Windows, press Windows Key + R, type ‘Winver’ in the run box, and press enter. Your version of Windows must be 1511 or higher for NVidia drivers to install. To update Windows 10:

Press Windows Key + I to open Windows 10 settings
Scroll down and click on Update & Security
In the Windows Update tab, click on ‘check for updates’
Accept the installation of all updates you find
Windows might restart a few times during these updates, do not interrupt it.

The Windows Student or Education edition and preview editions of Windows 10 will not update to the Threshold 2, Anniversary or Fall Creators versions so you will need to clean install the Anniversary or Fall Creators versions. See install windows 10 on how to clean install Windows 10 if you already have a license key, ignore the step on getting one. You can find useful information about installing Windows 10 at clean install windows 10 and https://appuals.com/how-to-create-windows-10-bootable-usb-using-rufus/.

Method 3: Use GeForce Experience to download your NVidia driver

Although Direct X Diagnostics (Run > type ‘dxdiag’ > OK > Display) will tell you which NVidia GPU you are using, it might not show the full information if the drivers are not installed. If you are not sure which NVidia/GeForce GPU you are running on, then GeForce Experience will help get the drivers for you.

Download GeForce Experience application and install it

When your latest drivers are found, they will be listed. Click on “Custom Install” to open the file (You can use express installation if you want but it will not let you choose the installation options).

Go to the GeForce website here
Make sure you have connected your monitor via the NVidia GPU if you are on a desktop computer.
Start the GeForce Experience program. If you are asked to update it, accept the update otherwise you might run into trouble.
Click on the “Drivers” tab. Any updates on your drivers will be found. You can click on “Check for Updates” on the far right to manually begin a search.
The drivers file will launch. Make sure you perform a clean install by checking ‘Perform clean install’ in the NVidia installation window. Finish the installation.
Restart your PC

If this is too much of trouble to you, there is an auto-detect feature on the GeForce website here that you can use instead of the manual search. This will automatically detect your GPU and present you with the latest drivers.

source from https://appuals.com

How to build your own computer

2014-01-27T21:54:00.002+08:00

Tools

There are only very few tools you need to assemble a computer. One bolt driver (C) to fasten distance bolts carrying your mainboard and fastening screws on serial ports, printer ports and similar plugs. Two cross point screwdrivers, Philips size #1 (B) and #2 (A). One set of slightly curved thin pliers for pulling jumpers. You can do that with your fingers as well. Thermal compound paste for CPU mounting. Nylon cable straps for fixing cables out of the way of coolers. Patience. That's it.

And now the fun-part:

Building your own El Cheapo Rocket

Let's start with the box. No fuzzing around, no designer boxes. Just a plain old big tower. Big towers are extra cooling metal, making your system last longer than small boxes. Watch for the craftsmanship, get boxes where the edges have been rounded off or folded. This prevents injuries or shortings at injured pieces of insulation. Look for the possibility to take off just the side covers without removing the full cover. This makes future servicing or upgrades easier. Get a box with not the thinnest metal parts, this will reduce noise by vibration.

Remove the screws of the box (marked in red) to open it and put them aside with the case covers.

They should be standard UNC screws, but sometimes for strange reasons box screws are different from standard screws, so keep them apart from the others.

Inside of the box there is the power supply (marked 1) and a set of accessories (marked 2) such as slot covers, a bag of screws and bolts, the mains cable and (optional) casters for the box itself.

The shipped accessories of a regular case.

Put the screws and bolts into one of the case covers, so they don't roll around all over the table.

Get rid of the shipped power supply. Almost all boxes are shipped with very simple, cheap, poor power supplies (left). Replace that with an Enermax 330, 350 (shown right) or 400 Watt power supply.

Maybe you find a place that can sell a standard box without power supply or replace that for an Enermax with a rebate for the shipped one. See above, the difference in workmanship is dramatic.

Open covers over future USB-terminals (1), audio jacks (3) and for add-on cards (4), where necessary according to the board you bought.

Check which case holes (2) will match your board.

Remove covers over all drive bays you will need for CD/DVD/CD-R-drives or similar. Leave them in all other places, they are meant to reduce electronic smog.

Lay the box on the side, and fix the panel connector cables with a strip of scotch tape to keep them out of your way.

Mainboard, CPU and upgrade cards

Get a good stable mainboard by a well reputated big manufacturer. Currently my best recommendation would be an Asus board for AMD Athlon and Duron CPUs. When you are on a tight budget, you may start with the smallest Duron CPU available (sells for peanuts) and upgrade to a 1.x GHz Athlon Thunderbird when that drops below 100 US$. The Asus board is much more expensive than any noname board, but it is thoroughly developed and comes with industries best support. This means you will most assuredly be able to upgrade your machine longer than any other, you will have excellent driver support and all manuals available online if you loose yours.

Put the board on a flat stable surface onto the anti static foam for assembly.

CPU: Even the slowest CPU available today is fast enough for most every daily office job, and capable of many daily routine jobs in graphic arts and photography. So you might start with a Duron. If you know you will need extra performance or have enough money to pre-invest in some headroom, go for the full Athlon Thunderbird CPU. Select your CPU by price, then. The smaller CPUs are cheaper than the big ones, but prices don't run linear with CPU clock. Look at the prices, they rise with CPU clock. You will find a disproportional rise somewhere in the line of CPUs, much more increase from one certain CPU to the next than that from the previous smaller one. The CPU before this big increase is the one to buy.

Open the lever of the ZIF (zero insertion force) socket. The CPU can only be placed in one orientation, check the missing pins and corresponding missing socket holes.

Close lever again to fix CPU. The four rubber points are buffers to prevent coolers from damaging CPUs by being tilted and mounted.

Cooler: Modern CPUs generate more heat per square inch than an oven plate. Up to 60 Watts of heating energy must be dispersed and killed. Buy the best cooler available, the Titan Majesty (left) or the Alpha (right) or the Pentalpha (below).

Remove the bubble gum thermal pad that is factory applied. Scrape it off and use Zippo lighter fluid or cleaning gasoline to get rid of all the rests. Try not to scratch the cooler plate.

Apply a very thin coating of thermal compound paste onto just the processor die itself. The die must be fully covered with a thin layer, but the paste should not squirt out when mounting the cooler on the CPU. Too much will not be temperature conductive anymore, it will turn into a thermal insulator. Mount CPU, cooler and memory before putting the board into the box. You will need some strength to mount the cooler.

On some coolers you can use a screwdriver as a lever. Be careful not to damage the board with the cooler bracket.

Memory:

Up to 128 MB Windows in all flavors will get faster with every MB of memory. Above that more memory is useful for graphic applications and others that are meant to process large files. It also allows to run several programs at the same time without too much loss of performance. My suggestion would be to buy no less than 128 MB, my recommendation is to buy at least 256 MB, if possible in one module. Above you can see notches in the memory module and the corresponding cams in the memory slot. You cannot mount memory in the wrong orientation. Memory is - together with board and power supply - the most common reason for instable systems. Get modules by major brands such as Infineon (shown above), Samsung or Micron.

Graphic card: Photoshop needs no 3D or gaming capabilities. A sharp signal and good performance in higher screen resolutions are much more critical. TV out is an excellent tool for printing to video or presentation on a TV monitor. I have only one recommendation for that, Matrox cards. Currently the Matrox G550 Double Head is the one to buy. 16 MB is plenty to fuel even big 22" screens, any memory exceeding this would be used for a few games, but makes no difference for the working graphics artist.

Sound card: Sound cards are either Soundblasters or compatible to that. More or less compatible. If you don't want a full audio studio setup, the cheapest original Creative Labs Soundblaster card will do (and the Soundblaster live in various combinations in known to cause problems). Pay more attention to the speakers. Lift them up, the better ones are usually heavier than the worse table horns. Even with subwoofers you shouldn't need to shell out more than 80 US$ max for a fine set of speakers. Speakers with power supply integrated are a better choice than speakers with external mains adapter plug - you can fully switch them off.

Hard drives Same as CPU, calculate what will give you the most GB per dollar. Go for IBM or Maxtor drives. 5400 rpm drives will give you the longest life, they are relatively quite and they are not very demanding regarding extra ventilation. 7200 rpm drives are faster, noisier and have a smaller life expectation because the bearings are stressed more than in slower drives. However, the increase in speed is not dramatic in applications like Photoshop, you need sustained write/read speeds for large files, with files fitting into physical memory that is basically only a help in opening or writing files. Saves only seconds, no big deal. So, I'd suggest to go for 5400 rpm drives.

CD-ROM, DVD, CD-R: DVDs are mostly used to watch video movies. Rarely software packages need that much room. I don't really need one today, but since prices drop dramatically, there is no reason not to put one into a new computer. CD recorders use a pickup that is heavier than that of regular CD-ROM drives. Using it for everyday work would wear it too fast. It is a good idea to buy a regular CD-ROM or DVD drive alongside your burner. Don't look for max spinning speed, look for a rugged unit. Drives with high nominal spinning rates usually produce reading errors at max speed, spin down, up again, down, up..... and you find that you bought a siren. Go for a nice and rugged Teac 40x drive or a Toshiba DVD. And while you're at it, grab a Teac or Plextor CD-recorder as well. The new class of 12(16)x/10x/32(40)x drives makes use of a nice little feature: BurnProof. This means the unit can detect a buffer underrun closing in and interrupt burning. Nothing big, huh ? No, but these units can resume at exactly the same position a few seconds later, when the buffer is filled again. Where you used to throw away CDs by the dozen, you now just receive the message that buffer underrun was avoided 5 times or so.... The Teac is a very good drive, but if you are up for audio as well, get the Plextor. It is from my experience a little better in audio.
There are several recording programs bundled with recorders today. I would recommend to throw them all away and not to install them if it isn't "Nero burning Rom" from Ahead (http://www.ahead.de). Do not install more than one CD recording program at once, they will most certainly interfere and make your machine shaky - you don't want that. There are programs that might perform better in gamecopy protection cracking, but remember this is a tool, not a toy. No games loaded anyway.

Removable media, backup: Veeeery important, and with deadly precision the part where regular budgets end. Without backup this might also be the point where your business ends.... With a limited budget don't worry too much about backing up the whole system. One can reinstall the OS plus all programs in one day. You have installation CDs for that. The dangerous part is losing your contracts, your images, the hours spent in retouching, maybe all your originals if you are fully digital. Burn everything including program settings, rare fonts, downloads and new drivers from the net and everything else you'd maybe need again to CD. Burn it to two sets of CDs, and store both sets in a cool, dry and dark (!) place. One in your house, and one in another house. Your house might burn down or you might get robbed or.... With a second set of backups life goes on. CDs are cheap. You are not.

If you want full security to the max possible state of the art, you will need a SCSI SLR or DLT tape drive and a dedicated backup program. Including disaster recovery, open file agent and other features this may well make much more than the complete machine without backup.

Input devices (keyboard, graphic tablets, mice): Don't fuss around with multimedia keyboards with loads of extra keys. They will need extra drivers to be fiddled into your system, a potential source of problems. If you are not typing much, the cheapest 10 US$ keyboard might do. If you type some more, go for a cherry keyboard at about 20 US$. There are cheaper graphic tablets, that I don't recommend. A simple small Wacom graphire at about 100 US$ does well. Go no cheaper. There is nothing more expensive than cheap tools. Get a good mouse, Logitech cordless wheel mouse classic, three buttons plus wheel. Or the same in standard cord version. The cordless is much more flexible in handling, but costs extra money. Optical mice are fascinating toys, but if you sport a calendar with printed grid on your desk, your cursor might run wild.

Scanners: USB scanners, firewire (IEEE 1394) or SCSI-Devices are the way to go. Don't try to settle for a parallel port toy. For little under 300 US$ you get good units from Microtek or Epson that come with translucent unit and you can expect to draw quite acceptable scans from MF negatives and slides with those. Buy an extra film scanner for 35, the quality of flatbeds with TLU is in 35mm only good for occasional web use. Nikon or Minolta in the low budget range, Canon, Nikon, Polaroid, Minolta and Microtek with the better ones.

Printers: For letters you do well with laser printers, there is no cheaper printing in the long run. But if you want to print images, there is no way around Epson printers. My personal tip for sheets up to 8x11.5" is the Epson 900 respectively the new 980. Mere 3 minutes for a print you can't tell from regular RA-4, provided you pick the right paper. If you want your prints archival, the Epson 2000 P is the thing to buy. It also prints up to 12x16" sheets and banners. There has just been introduced a new Epson with archival single ink tanks. I will look into that and report back.

Monitors:Monitors are what you stare at (all day if you are slow...). Don't buy cheap, as a photographer your eyes are your most precious tool, you don't want to ruin them. Buy Eizo, Quatographic, Sony Triniton and similar. Be prepared to really shell out some money. This keeps your eyes healthy and it delivers enough contrast and sharpness to judge color balance at all. LCD screens look impressive, they are flickerfree, but they have one crucial disadvantage: Their color rendition is not fit for picture processing and cannot be properly calibrated. Get a monitor that is capable of using BNC cable terminals for input. This adds to signal quality.

Putting the box together.....

There are only very few different sorts of screws and bolts used in computers.

There are two different threads, one coarse (A,B) and one finer threading (C). A-type screws are for case covers, slot covers, mainboard fixing. B-type screws are used to mount hard disk drives, C-type screws are used for Floppy Disk drives and CD-ROMs, CD burners, DVD drives and Zip-drives. Pretty simple, isn't it ?

First mount CPU, cooler and memory on the mainboard. The mainboard is then mounted in the box. It is mounted on distance bolts that come in several variations. 1,2,8 and 9 are basically the same, just different in length adjusted to the box dimensions. These are the best fixtures available. Make sure the box you buy has these, and not 5 or 6 type bolts. The mainboard has holes, and the boxes have fixing threads. Where ever a mainboard hole corresponds to a hole in the box put in one of the 1,2,8,9 type bolts and tighten it wit the bolt driver. Make sure it is tightened, but don't push it too much, else you might damage the thread.

4 type plastic bolts fit in the same threads, but are of minor quality. Do not use them, get extra metal bolts to replace them.

Put a 3 type board supporter in every hole of the board that has no corresponding threaded hole in the casing.

Put the board into the case and secure with screws type A or C as above. Distance bolts can have both threads as inner threads. Watch to pick the correct one before putting in a screw.

Panel connectors

Panel connector cables are marked with function. Connectors to switches (power on, reset) can be mounted any way you like, LED connectors have a white wire on the common/ground/minus port. The speaker connector has a red wire for plus and a black wire for minus.

Mount them as described in the board manual.

Harddrives, floppies Mount the drives in their bays and secure them with screws (C,F below).

Connect the ribbon data cables (B, D) to the drives. There is always one wire marked in red, this is always pin 1. Most cables are keyed to prevent plugging them the wrong way. Nevertheless check to make sure, pin 1 on the drive is also marked. Usually it is the pin next to the power connector. If there is only one device on a cable, plug it into the ending last connector. Next plug in the power supplies (A, E). Again, no way to plug them wrong, the plug shape prohibits this.

Cable straps This is one of the features making the difference between a poorly assembled and a proper computer.

Bundle all cables and strap the bundles to case cover and drive bays where feasible. Do this in a way that guarantees maximum air circulation and keeps cables clear of cooler fans. A single cable obstructing a cooler fan can kill your whole system.

Cut off protruding strap tips.

Switching on.....

After double checking that you plugged all cables correctly (refer to the mainboard manual and not only try where "it fits"), plug in keyboard, mouse and monitor. Caution: If you forget the mouse, you have to switch the machine off before plugging. PS/2 mice may never be plugged or unplugged with the machine running, this may fatally damage the port interface.

Now you're ready to switch on. Leave the case open for the first time, if you have bad luck and something smolders, you can pull the plug. The system will perform a selftest and after a few seconds the screen will show BIOS status reports.
You are done, the system is ready.

source: http://www.photoquack.de

How to Install Android on Your PC

2014-01-15T08:53:00.001+08:00

It used to be the case that PC users had the choice of installing Windows or, if they were feeling adventurous, a version of Linux. This is still true, but it is now also possible to install OS X without owning a Mac and virtualization means that you can do all of this alongside your main operating system in a virtual computer.
This being Android.AppStorm, you may well wonder what virtualization has to do with your phone or tablet. Well, how would you feel about the chance of installing and running Android on your PC? Using a free copy of VirtualBox and the information in this guide, you can run a fully functioning – and legal – version of Jelly Bean on your computer.

It’s a Simple Process

First, you’ll need to grab yourself a copy of VirtualBox. This powerful virtualization utility can be used to install a second operating system alongside your primary one, and while this usually means running a second copy of Windows or trying out Ubuntu, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able install a mobile operating system as well.

Android may have been designed for your phone and tablet , but that doesn’t mean it needs to stay there.

Once you have the virtualization software up and running, you’ll need to get hold of a copy of Jelly Bean to install. This does not mean that you need to obtain an illicit copy of the operating system from an untrustworthy website, or rip a copy of your phone’s ROM – it is actually freely available.

Step 1: Grab an Android ROM

There are various versions of Android available for download, but it makes sense to work with the most recent version – Jelly Bean. Head over to the Android-x86 website scroll down to the Android-x86-4.2-devel section and click the View link for the most up to date version (at time of writing this is 4.2 20130228).

There are several Android ROMs available to download including the latest version of Jelly Bean.

Weighing in at just under 200MB, the download will take a moment to transfer. Once you have the ISO file on your hard drive, you’re ready to set about the task of installing it in VirtualBox.

Step 2: Going Virtual

Pay a visit to the VirtualBox download page and click the link to download the software. Here, I’m working with Windows 8, but VirtualBox is compatible with older versions of Microsoft’s operating system, and there are also versions available for OS X and Linux.

VirtualBox can be used to install a second operating system on your computer, including Android.

Once downloaded, run through the installation of the program – just accept all of the default options. Don’t be concerned when you’re asked to install a new network adaptor as this is part if the usual installation process.

A virtual network adaptor will be installed by VirtualBox to allow virtual machines to get online.

Once installation is complete, launch VirtualBox and you’re ready to move to the next stage.

Step 3: Create a Virtual Machine

You’ll need to start by creating a new virtual machine onto which you will install Android. Click the New button. Name the virtual machine whatever you like, and (as Android is based on Linux) select Linux from the first drop down menu. From the Version menu select Other Linux and then click Next.

Android is a Linux-based operating system and it needs to be correctly identified in VirtualBox.

Move the memory slider to the right so that 512MB or more of RAM is set aside for VirtualBox and click Next. Make sure that the Create a virtual hard drive now option is selected and click Create. Select VDI, click Next and then select the Fixed size option before clicking Next.
You can then use the slider to choose how large a disk should be assigned to the virtual machine, and you can use the folder button to choose where it should be stored. Click Create when you’ve configured your settings — it might take a few minutes for the virtual disk to be created.

Your virtual Android device can be assigned a drive capacity of your choice — go wild!

Step 4: Install Android

Make sure that you have your newly created virtual machine selected and then click the Settings button in the toolbar. Click the Storage link to the left hand side of the dialog and then towards the center click the Empty entry in the Storage Tree section.
To the right of this, click the small disc button and select Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file from the menu that appears. Navigate to the ISO file you have downloaded, select it and click Open followed by OK.

The ISO files you’ve downloaded can be used as a virtual CD to install Android.

Power up your virtual machine by clicking the Start button in the VirtualBox toolbar.

If this is the first time you’ve used the program you may see a message letting you know about mouse capturing. When you move the mouse cursor inside the virtual machine window you’ll find that you cannot move it back out to control Windows as you normally would – just remember to press the right hand Ctrl key to free up the mouse when you need to.

Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to scroll down to the Installation option and press Enter.

Android can be run without installation, but opting to install provides a better, faster experience.

Now you will need to configure the virtual hard drive so that there is somewhere to install Android to. Select the Create/Modify Partition option and press Enter.
Select New at the bottom of the screen and press Enter, and then select the Primary option before pressing Enter again. Press Enter to create a partition that occupies your entire virtual drive.

Configuring hard drives for Android may seem complex, but it takes just a few moments.

Now select the Bootable option and press Enter, select Write and press Enter, and then type the word yes before pressing Enter once again. Select Quit, choose the partition you’ve just created and press Enter.
When prompted, select the option to use the ext3 file system and select Yes to confirm your choice. The GRUB bootloader takes care of launching Android, so select Yes to install it and then select Yes again to make the /system directory writeable.

The correct drive format must be selected for Android to work properly, so take care during configuration.

It won’t be long before Android boots, and at this point you should remove the virtual CD from the drive. Click the Devices menu and select CD/DVD Devices followed by Remove disk from virtual drive.

It’s a slightly time-consuming process, but getting Android on your PC is very rewarding.

Step 5: Almost There!

You might find that Android takes a little while to boot up — at least the first time around — and you’ll then have to run through the initial configuration just like you did the first time you switched on your phone or tablet.
Should you find that your mouse does not work and you are unable to click within Android, click the Machine menu in Virtual Box and then click Disable Mouse Integration. You may also find it useful to click View followed by Switch to Scale Mode if you find the mouse acts erratically — you can switch back to regular mode by pressing the right Ctrl key and C at the same time.

The first time you run Android you’ll have to set it up just like you did on your phone or tablet.

You can ignore any steps related to connecting to a wireless network as VirtualBox will just make use of your computer connection without the need for additional configuration.

Running Android within Windows can feel strange to start with, but it’s also great fun!

Now it’s time to pay a visit to Google Play and start downloading apps! Let us know how you get on, particularly if you think up any interesting uses for a virtualized copy of Android.

Send WhatsApp messages via PHP using WhatsAPI

2013-11-27T09:21:00.000+08:00

I recently discovered that once you have acquired your WhatsApp account password, it’s relatively easy to send and receive WhatsApp messages via PHP. Using the PHP-based framework WhatsAPI, a simple WhatsApp notifier script only has a dozen lines of code.
This tiny tutorial shows how to use the two very basic functions of WhatsAPI, namely to send simple outgoing messages to any number and to listen for new incoming messages from your own WhatsApp account. This is the second part of a two-part tutorial. The first part demonstrated how to sniff the WhatsApp password from your Android phone or iPhone.

1. Get your WhatsApp password

This little demonstration only works if you have already obtained your WhatsApp password. If you have not and have no idea how to do it, please check out the first part of this tutorial.

2. Get WhatsAPI and send/receive messages

Assuming you have your WhatsApp password at hand, let’s see how easy the usage of WhatsAPI is.

2.1. Download WhatsAPI and test scripts

Downloading WhatsAPI is really simply since it is hosted on Github. Simply make a new directory and retrieve WhatsAPI from Github.

mkdir whatsapp
cd whatsapp
sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/venomous0x/WhatsAPI

mkdir whatsapp

cd whatsapp

sudo apt-get install git

git clone https://github.com/venomous0x/WhatsAPI

Once you have done that, you can check out the current structure of the project. There is also a file called EXAMPLES.php that shows a few more examples.
I also prepared a few small scripts that you can use as a basis to make your own scripts:

whatsapp_whatsapi_send.php is a command line script to send any strings to a given number.
whatsapp_whatsapi_listen.php listens for incoming messages and outputs them to STDOUT.
whatsapp_whatsapi_config.php defines the configuration (source/destination numbers and WhatsApp password) for the send/listen scripts
whatsapp_whatsapi_example_messages.txt shows the structure of a few WhatsApp messages (print_r($msgs) output).

To download my two minimal examples, run the following commands, and edit the file whatsapp_whatsapi_config.php to set your own user credentials:

wget
 -O whatsapp_whatsapi_send.php 
http://blog.philippheckel.com/uploads/2013/07/whatsapp_whatsapi_send.php.txt
wget
 -O whatsapp_whatsapi_listen.php 
http://blog.philippheckel.com/uploads/2013/07/whatsapp_whatsapi_listen.php.txt
wget
 -O whatsapp_whatsapi_config.php 
http://blog.philippheckel.com/uploads/2013/07/whatsapp_whatsapi_config.php.txt
wget
 -O whatsapp_whatsapi_example_messages.txt 
http://blog.philippheckel.com/uploads/2013/07/whatsapp_whatsapi_example_messages.txt
chmod
 +x *.php
vi whatsapp_whatsapi_config.php

wget -O whatsapp_whatsapi_send.php http://blog.philippheckel.com/uploads/2013/07/whatsapp_whatsapi_send.php.txt

wget -O whatsapp_whatsapi_listen.php http://blog.philippheckel.com/uploads/2013/07/whatsapp_whatsapi_listen.php.txt

wget -O whatsapp_whatsapi_config.php http://blog.philippheckel.com/uploads/2013/07/whatsapp_whatsapi_config.php.txt

wget -O whatsapp_whatsapi_example_messages.txt http://blog.philippheckel.com/uploads/2013/07/whatsapp_whatsapi_example_messages.txt

chmod +x *.php

vi whatsapp_whatsapi_config.php

2.2. Send WhatsApp messages

As you might know from your smartphone client, you can send different kind of messages through WhatsApp: Besides text, you can send audio and video files, locations and contacts. WhatsAPI can do all of those things in just one line of code.
My simple sample script whatsapp_whatsapi_send.php just shows how to send a regular text message. The script is meant to be called by the command line, but the code can also be used in a web application:

#!/usr/bin/php
<?php

require_once('whatsapp_whatsapi_config.php');

$destinationPhone = '495553333333';

$w = new WhatsProt($userPhone, $userIdentity, $userName, $debug);
$w->Connect();
$w->LoginWithPassword($password);
$w->Message($destinationPhone, $argv[1]);

?>

#!/usr/bin/php

<?php

require_once('whatsapp_whatsapi_config.php');

$destinationPhone = '495553333333';

$w = new WhatsProt($userPhone, $userIdentity, $userName, $debug);

$w->Connect();

$w->LoginWithPassword($password);

$w->Message($destinationPhone, $argv[1]);

The script includes the configuration for your WhatsApp username, password and display name. It’s very easy to use and quite self-explanatory: The WhatsProt class is the only thing you need. Simple Connect to the WhatsApp servers and LoginWithPassword to authenticate yourself. After that, you can use the following methods:

Message($to, $msg): Simply send a regular text message to $to.
MessageImage($to, $imageURI): Send images by URL or local path (jpg) to $to.
MessageVideo($to, $videoURI): Send videos by URL or local path (mp4) to $to.
MessageAudio($to, $audioURI): Send audios by URL or local path (mp3) to $to.
Location($to, $lng, $lat): Send GPS coordinates to $to
vCard($to, $vCardName, $vCard): Send a vCard to $to.
WaitForReceipt(): Wait for the WhatsApp servers to confirm the delivery.

The tiny script from above obviously only sends plain text messages. You can use it from the command line like this:

./whatsapp_whatsapi_send.php "Warning: CPU temperature at 65°C"

1	./whatsapp_whatsapi_send.php "Warning: CPU temperature at 65°C"

The script is particularly useful as a WhatsApp notifier, allowing you to receive notifications from your servers whenever you want — for example, if the CPU temperature rises above a certain threshold, the load is too high for a certain amount of time or one of your scripts failed/succeeded. This is particularly interesting in combination with a system monitoring service such as Nagios or Monit.

2.3. Receive WhatsApp messages

To be able to receive WhatsApp messages using PHP, you need to listen for new messages. WhatsAPI’s PollMessages does exactly that. It reads messages from the WhatsApp server socket and puts them in a local queue for processing. The method blocks if there are no messages and waits for the server to send a message indefinitely — just like any other server does. Using GetMessages you can pull the messages from the queue and process them in your application.
A minimal script would look very similar to the example from above, except that instead of calling Message(), you need to call PollMessages() and GetMessages() in a server loop:

<?php

require_once('whatsapp_whatsapi_config.php');

$w = new WhatsProt($userPhone, $userIdentity, $userName, $debug);
$w->Connect();
$w->LoginWithPassword($password);

while (true) {
    $w->PollMessages();
    $msgs = $w->GetMessages();
    // Do something with the messages ...
}

?>

<?php

require_once('whatsapp_whatsapi_config.php');

$w = new WhatsProt($userPhone, $userIdentity, $userName, $debug);

$w->Connect();

$w->LoginWithPassword($password);

while (true) {

$w->PollMessages();

$msgs = $w->GetMessages();

// Do something with the messages ...

}

Each WhatsApp message has a set of standard attributes ($m->_attributeHash) such as from (sender number) or t (send timestamp). Additionally, it has different kind of child nodes that contain additional/optional information, depending on what type of message it is: a notify child node, for instance, tells the conversation partner that he or she is online and still writing, and the body child node contains the text contents. There are many more of these. You can see for yourself by calling print_r($msgs).
The following snippet shows an excerpt of one message — refer to this example output to see more:

ProtocolNode Object
(
    [_tag] => message
    [_attributeHash] => Array
        (
            [from] => 491231234567@s.whatsapp.net
            [id] => 1373204559-6
            [type] => chat
            [t] => 1373205620
        )

    [_children] => Array
        (
         ...
            [2] => ProtocolNode Object
                (
                    [_tag] => body
                    ...
                    [_children] => 
                    [_data] => Hallo blog readers
                )
        )
    [_data] => 
)

ProtocolNode Object

(

[_tag] => message

[_attributeHash] => Array

(

[from] => 491231234567@s.whatsapp.net

[id] => 1373204559-6

[type] => chat

[t] => 1373205620

)

[_children] => Array

(

...

[2] => ProtocolNode Object

(

[_tag] => body

...

[_children] =>

[_data] => Hallo blog readers

)

[_data] =>

)

My example server script whatsapp_whatsapi_listen.php extends the above snippet and processes the messages like this: It takes the time (t) and sender number (from) from $m->_attributeHash and the name and _data from the child nodes. Each non-empty message is printed to STDOUT, like this:

./whatsapp_whatsapi_listen.php 
[07/07/2013 15:57] From: 491231234567, Name: Philipp, Message: Hallo blog readers
[07/07/2013 15:57] From: 491231234567, Name: Philipp, Message: Everything I write is printed to STDOUT
[07/07/2013 15:57] From: 491231234567, Name: Philipp, Message: Exit

./whatsapp_whatsapi_listen.php

[07/07/2013 15:57] From: 491231234567, Name: Philipp, Message: Hallo blog readers

[07/07/2013 15:57] From: 491231234567, Name: Philipp, Message: Everything I write is printed to STDOUT

[07/07/2013 15:57] From: 491231234567, Name: Philipp, Message: Exit

If the message body is “exit”, the script exits.

That’s it. I hope this tutorial helped a little in understanding how WhatsAPI works. If you have any suggestions or questions, please let me know in the comments.

source from http://blog.philippheckel.com

HACK- Candy Crush Saga v1.xx.0 (Multi Mods) – Android

2013-11-10T09:03:00.004+08:00

This hack is for Candy Crush Saga on android devices. This hack uses the Install Hacked APK method.

Hack Features:
Many different depending on file.

Instructions:

Download the zip file provided at the bottom of the page.
Extract the file.
Transfer the APK file onto your device (preferably SD card in /sdcard/download/)
Use a file explorer to navigate to the location of the saved APK (Should be /sdcard/download/)
Click the APK and select install.
Launch the game.
Enjoy

NOTE! If you are having Facebook connections follow the instructions below:

Uninstall original Candy Crush.
Go into your Facebook account settings.
Go to your app settings
Remove Candy Crush
Install modded APK
Launch game and connect to Facebook

Hack:

Candy Crush Saga v1.28.0

source from: http://www.ugeeko.com/

Android Location Based Services Application – GPS location

2013-03-05T20:17:00.001+08:00

With the incorporation of GPS devices in smartphones, Location Based Services (LBS) have become pretty hot the past few years. The iPhone was the first to give a huge boost to this kind of applications and now Android continues on the same path. In this tutorial, I will show you how to build your first LBS application for Android. The first step is retrieving the user’s current location and then using his coordinates to provide data for that location.
In general, the user’s pinpointing on the map is feasible in one of the following ways:

Using the GPS device that comes with the mobile
Using the ID of the Cell that the user is currently served by

The first one is much easier and more accurate (since the second provides only an approximation). Since these days a big number of phones do have GPS devices onboard, we will use the first way. The Android SDK’s emulator can emulate changes in the user’s location and provide dummy data for his coordinates.
Let’s get started by creating a new Android Project in Eclipse. I gave it the fancy name “AndroidLbsGeocodingProject” and used the properties as shown in the following image:

Note that I used the Android 1.5 platform version and “3” as the SDK’s min version. The application is not going to use any of the new super-duper APIs, so I decided to go with one of the first versions for backwards compatibility. It is generally a good idea to support as many versions as possible. You can find information regarding the platform versions and their corresponding market share here.
To start with, we will only add a button which will trigger the retrieval of the current location’s coordinates from a location provider. Thus, the “main.xml” file for the application’s interface will be as simple as this:

01<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

02<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"

03    android:orientation="vertical"

04    android:layout_width="fill_parent"

05    android:layout_height="fill_parent"

06    >

07<Button

08 android:id="@+id/retrieve_location_button"

09 android:text="Retrieve Location"

10 android:layout_width="wrap_content"

11 android:layout_height="wrap_content"

12 />

13</LinearLayout>

In order to get started with the location capabilities of the Android API, the first step is to take reference of the LocationManager class, which provides access to the system location services. This is done via the getSystemService of our activity (actually it inherits it from the Context parent class). Then, we request updates of the device’s location using the method requestLocationUpdates. In that method, we provide the name of the preferred location provider (in our case GPS), the minimum time interval for notifications (in milliseconds), the minimum distance interval for notifications (in meters) and finally a class implementing the LocationListener interface. That interface declares methods for handling changes in the user’s location as well as changes in the location provider’s status. All the above can be translated into code as below:

01package com.javacodegeeks.android.lbs;

02

03import android.app.Activity;

04import android.content.Context;

05import android.location.Location;

06import android.location.LocationListener;

07import android.location.LocationManager;

08import android.os.Bundle;

09import android.view.View;

10import android.view.View.OnClickListener;

11import android.widget.Button;

12import android.widget.Toast;

13

14public class LbsGeocodingActivity extends Activity {

15     

16    private static final long MINIMUM_DISTANCE_CHANGE_FOR_UPDATES = 1; // in Meters

17    private static final long MINIMUM_TIME_BETWEEN_UPDATES = 1000; // in Milliseconds

18     

19    protected LocationManager locationManager;

20     

21    protected Button retrieveLocationButton;

22     

23    @Override

24    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

25         

26        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

27        setContentView(R.layout.main);

28

29        retrieveLocationButton = (Button) findViewById(R.id.retrieve_location_button);

30         

31        locationManager = (LocationManager) getSystemService(Context.LOCATION_SERVICE);

32         

33        locationManager.requestLocationUpdates(

34                LocationManager.GPS_PROVIDER, 

35                MINIMUM_TIME_BETWEEN_UPDATES, 

36                MINIMUM_DISTANCE_CHANGE_FOR_UPDATES,

37                new MyLocationListener()

38        );

39         

40    retrieveLocationButton.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {

41            @Override

42            public void onClick(View v) {

43                showCurrentLocation();

44            }

45    });        

46         

47    }    

48

49    protected void showCurrentLocation() {

50

51        Location location = locationManager.getLastKnownLocation(LocationManager.GPS_PROVIDER);

52

53        if (location != null) {

54            String message = String.format(

55                    "Current Location \n Longitude: %1$s \n Latitude: %2$s",

56                    location.getLongitude(), location.getLatitude()

57            );

58            Toast.makeText(LbsGeocodingActivity.this, message,

59                    Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();

60        }

61

62    }   

63

64    private class MyLocationListener implements LocationListener {

65

66        public void onLocationChanged(Location location) {

67            String message = String.format(

68                    "New Location \n Longitude: %1$s \n Latitude: %2$s",

69                    location.getLongitude(), location.getLatitude()

70            );

71            Toast.makeText(LbsGeocodingActivity.this, message, Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();

72        }

73

74        public void onStatusChanged(String s, int i, Bundle b) {

75            Toast.makeText(LbsGeocodingActivity.this, "Provider status changed",

76                    Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();

77        }

78

79        public void onProviderDisabled(String s) {

80            Toast.makeText(LbsGeocodingActivity.this,

81                    "Provider disabled by the user. GPS turned off",

82                    Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();

83        }

84

85        public void onProviderEnabled(String s) {

86            Toast.makeText(LbsGeocodingActivity.this,

87                    "Provider enabled by the user. GPS turned on",

88                    Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();

89        }

90

91    }

92     

93}

For the LocationListener interface, we implemented the MyLocationListener inner class. The methods in that class just use Toasts to provide info about the GPS status or any location changes. The only interface element is a Button which gets hooked up with a OnClickListener and when it is clicked, the showCurrentLocation method is invoked. Then, the getLastKnownLocation of the LocationManager instance is executed returning the last known Location. From a Location object we can get information regarding the user’s altitude, latitude, longitude, speed etc. In order to be able to run the above code, the necessary permissions have to be granted. These are:

Include those in the AndroidManifest.xml file, which will be as follows:

01<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

02

03<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"

04      package="com.javacodegeeks.android.lbs"

05      android:versionCode="1"

06      android:versionName="1.0">

07       

08    <application android:icon="@drawable/icon" android:label="@string/app_name">

09        <activity android:name=".LbsGeocodingActivity"

10                  android:label="@string/app_name">

11            <intent-filter>

12                <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />

13                <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />

14            </intent-filter>

15        </activity>

16

17    </application>

18     

19    <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION" />

20 <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_MOCK_LOCATION" /> 

21 <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION" />

22     

23    <uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="3" />

24

25</manifest>

Next, use the AVD Manager in order to create a new Android device and make sure that GPS support is included in the features:

Next, use “Run–> Run Configurations…” to create a new configuration for the project:

If you hit Run, the emulator is started, but nothing will really happen when the button is clicked. That is because when the emulator starts, there is no last known location to be retrieved (the Location instance that is returned is null).
We have to feed the emulator with some dummy data. Go to the DDMS view of Eclipse and look for the “Emulation Control” tab. There, among other things, you will find the “Location Controls” section, which can send mock location data to the emulator. In the “Manual” tab, just hit the “Send” button, there are already some coordinates set up.

When the data are sent to the emulator’s GPS device, our listener will be triggered and the current location will be printed in the screen in the form of a Toast notification.

Now, a last known location exists, so if you hit the “Retrieve Location” button, a not null location will be fetched and the coordinates will again be printed in the screen:

That’s it. Now you are able to emulate changes in the user’s location and retrieve updates about them. In the next tutorial, I will show you how to leverage those coordinates in order to provide useful data to the user. For now, you can find the Eclipse project here.
Happy coding!!!

source from: Nikos Maravitsas

Android Hello World Example – How to develop android apps

2013-01-01T20:30:00.000+08:00

In this tutorial, we will go through the necessary steps you need to take in order to develop your first Android application in Eclipse IDE using the ADT plugin and run it with an Android Virtual Device.
The ADT plugin provides easy Android Project creation and management with rich editor features and documentation as well as Android Virtual Device (AVD) management.

The steps :

Download and Install the Android SDK
Download and Install the ADT Eclipse plugin
Create an Android Virtual Device (AVD)
Create an Android Project with Eclipse
Run the Application in the Android Virtual Device

We will use the following tools in a Windows 64-bit platform:

JDK 1.7
Eclipse 4.2 Juno
Android SKD 4.2

1. Download and Install the Android SDK

Go to the Android SDK page, and download the appropriate version for your platform. You can choose to download the ADT (Android Development Tools) bundle, in which you will find both Eclipse and the Android SDK. But if you already have an Eclipse instance in your pc, click “USE AN EXISTING IDE” and Download the SDK Tools for your platform. This will download an installer to your system.

Run the installer and choose the SDK Path in which the SDK will be installed.

When the installation is finished, launch the Android SDK Manager.
The Android SDK Manager will install the Android Version you want to use and other tools and APIs as well. We are going to use Android 4.2.

2. Download and Install the ADT Eclipse plugin

In this step we are going to integrate Android SDK with Eclipse IDE, using the ADT (Android Development Tools) plugin.
Open Eclipse and select Help -> Install New Software…, and in the first textfield put the following URL and click Add:

`1`	`https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/`

You may click Select All and Next to install the ADT. If you face any problems with the installation of the ADT plugin or if it is taking way to long to download and install, you can try installing the ADT manually and, of course you can follow the Troubleshooting Instructions.

3. Create an Android Virtual Device (AVD)

When you are done installing the ADT plugin you will be asked to restart the IDE. After restarting Eclipse, notice the two Android Development Tools Icons on the Eclipse Toolbar.

Using these Icons you can instantly open the Android SDK Manager and setup an Android Virtual Device (AVD) respectively. Click the right icon and in the pop up window click New to add a new Virtual Device.

4. Create an Android Project with Eclipse

Now it’s time to create a new Android project. Select File -> New -> Project. Then select Android Application Project and click Next.

After specifying the Applications details (e.g. Application name) , go to the Project Explorer.

Right click on the project name (in this case “HelloWorld”…) and select New->Android Activity. If Android Activity doesn’t show up, select New->Other->Android->Android Activity.

And click Next. You will be asked to specify some details about this Activity (e.g. name). Then, navigate to the java file which contains the source code of the new activity.

And paste the following code in the OnCreate method:

01package com.javacodegeeks.android.helloword;

02 

03import android.app.Activity;

04import android.os.Bundle;

05import android.widget.TextView;

06 

07public class MainActivity extends Activity {

08 

09    @Override

10    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

11        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

12 

13        TextView text = new TextView(this);

14        text.setText("Hello World of Android! - Greetings from Java Code Geeks");

15        setContentView(text);

16    }

17 

18}

5. Run the Application in the Android Virtual Device

You can now Run the project as Android Application. The emulator will be launched. This usually takes some time. So, when you are working on a Project, just launch the emulator once and leave it open.

Download Eclipse Project

Download the Eclipse Project of this tutorial HelloWorld.zip.

source from: Nikos Maravitsas

How to install Windows XP on DV9500, DV6500 and DV2500 above model notebooks without using USB floppy drive.

2012-06-07T18:02:00.005+08:00

How to install Windows XP on DV9500, DV6500,DV2500 and V3000 above model notebooks without using USB floppy drive.

If your notebook shipped with the Intel Processor and it is HP DV9500, DV6500 and DV2500 and above model notebooks. When you try to install XP on it using the XP operating system discs, mostly you will see the error that “Hard drive not found”. This issue occurs because the Operating system disc which you are using does not has the SATA drivers and all New HP notebooks shipped with the SATA hard drive. SATA is a technology which will be not supported by XP.

To resolve this issue and to install XP on your notebook, we need to install SATA drivers. This tutorial covers the process of installing Windows XP on an HP DV9500, DV6500 and DV2500 with Intel processor series Laptop. Currently, most HP Laptops are being shipped with Windows Vista, and there is minimal driver support on the HP website site for those who want to downgrade to Windows XP.

Generally we need USB floppy drive to install SATA driver on the above listed series notebooks but we can install SATA drivers with out using USB floppy drive.

To do this we are using nLite which will create a Windows XP installation disk with integrated SATA drivers. To do this we need a Optical drive which can burn discs. I would also recommend having a USB flash drive handy to hold the additional drivers that will be installed after XP installation.

Before proceeding to create a XP operating system disc with SATA drivers, I recommend to back up the important data from hard drive and create recovery discs for your notebook from recovery partition.

HP computers that ship with Microsoft Windows Vista do not come with recovery CDs. Instead, they use a space (partition) on the hard disk drive to store the recovery information. The use of a hidden partition provides a convenient process that eliminates the use of recovery discs that may be lost or scratched. Recovery discs for Windows Vista can be created by using the Recovery Manager or are available from HP for a minimal cost.

Here is the web link which has instructions to create recovery discs for your notebook using recovery manager software. Please follow the instruction and create recovery discs.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&docname=c00809678

Installation Procedure to f install Windows XP on a HP dv6500, dv9500, dv2500 series Laptop

First we need to "create a new Windows XP installation disk integrated with SATA drive controller drivers" (Intel SATA AHCI Controller Driver). Otherwise Windows XP will not find the hard disk during the installation procedure.

1. Download and install the nLite software from following web link.

http://www.nliteos.com/download.html

2. Download the Intel SATA AHCI Controller Driver from following ftp link and run the executable installing to the default c:\swsetup\SP37005 path (Note: After running the sp37005 file, it will ask you to insert a floppy, ignore the message and click on cancel)

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp37001-37500/sp37005.exe

3. Insert your Windows XP CD into your CD drive

4. Navigate to Start -> Programs -> nLite and click nLite to launch the program

5. Once you get to the Locating the Windows installation section, Click the Browse button and navigate to the CD drive where your Windows install CD resides, then click OK and Next

6. Next, the program will ask you where to save the CD installation files for modification, click OK
7. Next, you will need to create a folder to save to and work from. Click the Make New Folder button, type in a folder name, and click OK

8. Next, nLite will attempt to copy all files from the Windows installation disk to the folder you have created. Once it has finished, click Next

9. Once you arrive at the Task Selection page, select the Drivers and Bootable ISO option and then click Next

10. Next to select the SATA drivers to integrate. Click Insert, select Single driver and navigate to the c:\swsetup\SP37005\Files and click iastor.inf and click Open

11. Next, select "ALL" of the driver files listed and then click OK .
12. Next, when prompted to start the process Click OK
13. After the process has finished, click Next till you arrive at the Bootable ISO page
14. I prefer to Create and ISO Image and then use other software to burn the ISO to a CD

15. Next, find your newly created ISO and burn your ISO to a CD using your preferred burning software
16. Insert the remastered Windows XP CD into your HP dv6500 series Laptop and proceed to install Windows XP

Samsung mobile tips, tricks& secrets

2012-06-06T10:00:00.000+08:00

To check Samsung mobile or cellphones IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity)

On the main screen type *#06#

Information you get from the IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity)
XXXXXX XX XXXXXX X
TAC FAC SNR SP

TAC = Type approval code of your samsung Mobile
FAC = Final assembly code of your cellphone
SNR = Serial number of your samsung Phone
SP = Spare

Other secret tricks for samsung mobile or cellphone

  If you have downloaded corrupted or incompatible Java midlets or other media,
  which are causing problems with the phone, try this
  *2767*JAVA# Java Reset and (Deletes all Java Midlets)
  *2767*MEDIA# Reset Media (Deletes All Sounds and Pics)
  *2767*WAP# Wap Reset
  *2767*CUST# Reset Custom EEPR0M
  *2767*FULL# Reset Full EEPR0M (Caution)
  For example : *2767*JAVA# would be keyed in as *2767*5282#
  Note : Not all codes will work with SGH-C100.

  The master reset code is:
  #*7728#
  This will not delete anything from your
  mobile phone, but set each and eveything to its
  default/standard setting as it was on the time of purchase.

  To unlock your phone put a sim from another company,
  now type *#9998*3323# it will reset your phone. Push exit and then push 7,
  it will reset again. Put your other sim in and it will say sim lock,
  type in 00000000 then it should be unlocked. Type in *0141# then
  the green call batton and it's unlocked to all networks.
  This code may not work on the older phones and some of the newer phones.
  If it doesn't work you will have to reset your phone without a sim in it
  by typing *#2767*2878# or *#9998*3855# (not tested)

  Other Samsung Codes
  *#9998*4357# Help Menu
  *#9998*5282# Java menu (GRPS/CSD settings for JAVA server)
    *#9999#0# Monitor Mode
  *#9999# or *#9998*9999# Software Version
  *#8888# or *#9998*8888# Hardware Version
  *#9998*746# or *#9998*0746# or *#0746# Sim Infos
  *#9998*523# or *#9998*0523# or *#0523# Display Contrast
  *#9998*842# or *#9998*0842# or *#0842# Vibration On (until you push OK)
  *#9998*289# or *#9998*0289# or *#0289# Buzzer On (until you push OK)
  *#9998*288# or *#9998*0288# or *#0288# Battery & Field Infos
  *#9998*377# or *#9998*0377# Error log
  *#9998*778# or *#9998*0778# or *#0778# Sim Service table
  *#9998*782# show date and alarm clock
  *#8999*638# show network information
  *#9998*5646# change operator logo at startup
  *#9998*76# production number
  *#9998*968# view melody for alarm
  *#9998*585# Non-Volatile Memory (NVM)
  *#3243948# Digital Audio Interference Off
  *#32436837# Digital Audio Interference On

SECRET PRANK

Change closed caller group (settings >security settings>user groups) to 00000 and your phone will sound the message tone when you are near a radar speed trap.
Setting it to 500 will cause your phone 2 set off security alarms at shop exits.
Try this secret trick if you can handle the unexpected.
Note: This secret trick wont work with all phones Models.

THE DETECTIVE TRICK (Mobile Spying)

Now you can spy on anyone using your cellphone. Just do the following.

Activate the "Automatic Answer" in the headset profile of your cellphone and set the ringing volume to "Mute"

Short-circuit the left middle and right pins on the bottom of the mobile phone with all connections touching each other this will activate profile "Headset".
If you cant do this just keep your earphone connected to mobile.

Now place it under a table in a room and call it. Now you can use your phone for checking out what people are talking about in a room. Just call on your phone.

The phone receives the call without ringing and you can listen to what people are saying.

Upgrade Samsung Galaxy S2 to official Android 4.0.3 XXLPQ firmware manually

2012-06-05T18:36:00.003+08:00

An official Ice Cream Sandwich update from Samsung has finally landed for Galaxy S2 users in the Poland through Samsung KIES. Some features appear to be missing from earlier leaks, such as no 3D animation effect in drawer and while swiping home screens.
Apart from that, firmware XXLPQ brings some improvements as well, with no touch lags and packed with TouchWiz 4 UI. If for some reason Ice Cream Sandwich has not yet arrived on your device and you don’t want to miss out on the fun, we’ll be showing you how you, too, can enjoy XXLPQ, the official Ice Cream Sandwich release, on your Galaxy S2.
We’ll be installing this firmware through Odin3. If you’re an Android novice, you have no reason to fear. The upgrade process is easy as long as you follow our guide below.
This update is only for the Galaxy S2, with the model number GT-I9100, and is not compatible with other devices. You may check your device’s model number through “Settings > About Phone.” If your phone does not match the model number, we highly discourage attempting to install this firmware update as it may lead to bricking.

Caution

Though this leaked firmware is originally intended for Poland, some users of the Samsung Galaxy S2 GT-I9100 have reported that this firmware work on Polish, Hungarian, Swedish, German, Pakistani, Korean, and European handsets, too.
But, still, you are advised to proceed with the update at your own risk. Any damage you cause to your phone or to yourself will be your sole responsibility.

Requirements

Take note of the following and comply with the requirements before updating:

Flashing this firmware update will wipe your data. Make sure to create a backup of any important data on your Galaxy S2.
Make sure to charge your Galaxy S2′s battery (at least 70%, full charge recommended). This prevents your Galaxy S2 from shutting off in the middle of the update process.
If you’ve got Samsung KIES installed on your computer, uninstall it as it may interrupt the update process.
A Windows PC
Download Odin3 v1.83 to your computer.
Make sure that you’ve got the device drivers for your phone installed on your Windows computer. 32 bit (x86) Windows | 63 bit (x64) Windows.
XXLPQ firmware — Download from here or here.

Update Instructions

These are the steps for applying the firmware update manually:

Download the XXLPQ firmware to your computer.
Extract the “I9100XXLPQ_I9100OXALPQ_I9100XXLPQ_HOME.tar.md5″ file using 7-Zip or WinRAR.
Turn off your Galaxy S2. Wait for the phone to vibrate, signalling that it is completely powered down.
Reboot your phone into Download Mode. You can do this by pressing and holding down the Volume Down, Home, and Power buttons until you get the Warning! message on the screen. Press the Volume Up button to enter download mode.
On your computer, run Odin3.
Connect your Galaxy S2 to your computer via USB cable. The message box in Odin3 will say “Added!” if the program successfully detected your phone.
In Odin3, click the PDA tab, navigate to where you extracted the contents of the XXLPQ firmware and select the “I9100XXLPQ_I9100OXALPQ_I9100XXLPQ_HOME.tar.md5″ file.
Check both the Auto Reboot and F. Reset Time checkboxes in the Option section. Leave everything else as is.
Hit START to begin installing the XXLPQ firmware.
Once the installation has completed, you should see the upper-left square in the Odin window light up in green with a “PASS!” message.
If Odin gets stuck in the middle of the installation process, you’ll need to do the following:
1. Disconnect the Galaxy S2 from the computer.
2. Close Odin.
3. Remove the Galaxy S2′s battery.
4. Re-insert it.
5. Boot phone back into Download mode.
6. Resume the procedure from step 6.
Your phone should now reboot.
After the firmware has installed and the phone reboots, some users have reported getting stuck at the S logo. If this happens, do the following:
1. Boot to recovery mode. Power off the phone. Wait for a few seconds and then press the Home, Volume Up, and Power buttons together.
2. Select “Wipe Data/Factory Reset.”
3. Select “Wipe Cache.”
4. Select “Reboot System Now.”

Congratulations! Your Samsung Galaxy S2 is now running on Ice Cream Sandwich with XXLPQ firmware.

Hacking Software - oclHashcat-plus v0.08

2012-06-05T10:15:00.001+08:00

What is oclHashcat-plus v0.08 ? oclHashcat-plus v0.08 worlds first ''GPU" based rule engine.It is also the worlds fastest phpass, mscash2,md5crypt and WPA/WPA2 cracker.

Description - oclHashcat-plus v0.08 ius an advanced password hacking software which is highly efficient and works faster than any other software of it's genre.There are a number of algorithms implemented in it and it has many features which make it the best software available for password cracker.

Some of it's Features

1.Multi-GPU (up to 16 gpus)

2.Multi-Hash (up to 24 million hashes)

3.Multi-OS (Linux & Windows native binaries)

4.Multi-Platform (OpenCL & CUDA support)

5.Supports reading words from file.

6.Supports reading words from stdin

7.Integrated thermal watchdog And many more..

Algorithms implemented -

1.Joomla.
2.MD5.
3.Oracle 11g.
4.MSSQL - 2000.
5.MSSQl -2005.
6.MySQl.
7.Phpass.
8.Oracle 7-10g.
9.SHA256.
10.NTLM.
11.MD4.
12.OSX10.7.
13.CISCO-PIX MD5.
14.Double MD5.
15.SSHA.
16.SHA-1(Base64), nsldap, Netscape LDAP SHA.
17.SSHA-1(Base64), nsldaps, Netscape LDAP.
18.DCC,mscash.
19.OSX v10.4, v10.5, v10.6.
20.SHA1.

Modes of Attack-

1.Straight
2.Combination
3.Brute-force
4.Permutation
5.Hybrid dict + mask
6.Hybrid mask + dict

Cracking a WPA handshake with OclHashcat-Plus(Video)

About The Author

This article is written by Shikhil Sharma, He blogs at www.hacking-tweaks.blogspot.com/.

Why is my Task Manager disabled, and how do I fix it?

2012-03-03T22:43:00.000+08:00

The situation's pretty simple. If you right click on the clock in the Windows taskbar, the Task Manager item is grayed out:

Or, if you try to run taskmgr.exe manually, you get this message:

So, how did this happen?
As we'll see in a moment, there are settings you can access as an administrator that would allow you to disable and enable Task Manager in this way.
You didn't do that, you say?
Then a virus probably did.
Disabling Task Manager is one way viruses try to make it harder for you to deal with their infections. Before proceeding any further, you should run a complete and up-to-date anti-virus scan of your machine. It's possible, perhaps even likely, that you've been infected.
Once you come back virus-free, you can proceed with the fix.

•

If you have Windows XP Pro, there's a nifty user interface to directly edit the setting you want to repair. Click Start, then click Run and type in gpedit.msc:

And press OK. This runs the Group Policy Editor.
Once in the Group Policy Editor, expand in turn:

User Configuration
Administrative Templates
System
Ctrl+Alt+Del Options

You should see something much like this:

Double click on Remove Task Manager to change its setting:

It should be enough to click on Not Configured and then OK and Task Manager is available once again.

•

If you don't have Windows XP Pro, then you'll need to edit the registry manually.
Click Start, then click Run, type in regedit, and click on OK.
Expand these registry keys in turn:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER
Software
Microsoft
Windows
CurrentVersion
Policies
System

You should see something similar to this:

Right Click on the DisableTaskMgr item:

Click on Delete, confirm that you want to delete, and Task Manager should be available once again.

28 Ways to Make Money with Your Website

2011-12-09T16:17:00.000+08:00

There are several lists with “ways to make money with a website” on the Internet, but none of them seem to be complete. That is why I decided to create this one. If you know a method that is not listed below, just let us know and we’ll update it.

Notice that ways to make money with a website are different from ways to make more money from it. Methods to increase your traffic or click-through rate will help you make more money, but they do not represent a method of making money per se.
For example, one could suggest that blending AdSense ads with the content is a way to make money from a website. In reality it’s not; it’s just a way to make more money by improving your ad click-through rate. The real monetization method behind it is a PPC ad network.
The list is divided into direct and indirect methods, and examples and links are provided for each point. Enjoy!

Direct Methods

1. PPC Advertising Networks
Google AdSense is the most popular option under this category, but there are also others. Basically you need to sign up with the network and paste some code snippets on your website. The network will then serve contextual ads (either text or images) relevant to your website, and you will earn a certain amount of money for every click.
The profitability of PPC advertising depends on the general traffic levels of the website and, most importantly, on the click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). The CTR depends on the design of the website. Ads placed abode the fold or blended with content, for instance, tend to get higher CTRs. The CPC, on the other hand, depends on the nice of the website. Mortgages, financial products and college education are examples of profitable niches (clicks worth a couple of dollars are not rare), while tech-related topics tend to receive a smaller CPC (sometimes as low as a couple of cents per click).
The source of the traffic can also affect the overall CTR rate. Organic traffic (the one that comes from search engines) tends to perform well because these visitors were already looking for something, and they tend to click on ads more often. Social media traffic, on the other hand, presents terribly low CTRs because these visitors are tech-savvy and they just ignore ads.
List of popular CPC advertising networks:

2. CPM Advertising Networks
CPM advertising networks behave pretty much as PPC networks, except that you get paid according to the number of impressions (i.e., page views) that the ads displayed on your site will generate. CPM stands for Cost per Mille, and it refers to the cost for 1,000 impressions.
A blog that generates 100,000 page views monthly displaying an advertising banner with a $1 CPM, therefore, will earn $100 monthly.
CPM rates vary with the network, the position of the ad and the format. The better the network, the higher the CPM rate (because they have access to more advertisers). The closer you put the ad to the top of the page, the higher the CPM. The bigger the format (in terms of pixels), the higher the CPM.
You can get as low as $0,10 and as high as $10 per 1,000 impressions (more in some special cases). CPM advertising tends to work well on websites with a high page views per visitor ratio (e.g., online forums, magazines and so on).
List of popular CPM advertising networks:

3. Direct Banner Advertising
Selling your own advertising space is one of the most lucrative monetization methods. First and foremost because it enables you to cut out the middleman commissions and to determine your own rates. The most popular banner formats on the web are the 728×90 leaderboard, the 120×600 skyscraper, the 300×250 rectangle and the 125×125 button.
The downside of direct banner advertising is that you need to have a big audience to get qualified advertisers, and you will need to spend time managing the sales process, the banners and the payments.
Related links:

4. Text Link Ads
After Google declared that sites selling text links without the nofollow tag would be penalized, this monetization method became less popular.
Many website owners are still using text links to monetize their sites, though, some using the nofollow tag and some not.
The advantage of this method is that it is not intrusive. One can sell text links directly through his website or use specialized networks like Text-Link-Ads and Text-Link-Brokers to automate the process.
Text link marketplaces and networks:

5. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a very popular practice on the Internet. Under this system you have a merchant that is willing to let other people (the affiliates) sell directly or indirectly its products and services, in exchange for a commission. Sometimes this type of advertising is also called CPA (cost per action) or CPL (cost per lead) based.
Affiliates can send potential customers to the merchant using several tools, from banners to text links and product reviews.
In order to find suitable affiliate programs you can turn to individual companies and publishers like Dreamhost and SEOBook, or join affiliate marketplaces and networks.
List of popular affiliate marketplaces and networks:

6. Monetization Widgets
The latest trend on the web are widgets that let you monetize your website. Examples include Widgetbucks and SmartLinks. Some of these services operate under a PPC scheme, others behave like text link ads, others yet leverage affiliate links.
Their main differentiator, however, is the fact that they work as web widgets, making it easier for the user to plug and play the service on its website.
List of companies that provide monetization widgets:

7. Sponsored Reviews
PayPerPost pioneered this model, with much controversy on the beginning (related to the fact that they did not require disclosure on paid posts). Soon other companies followed, most notably Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe, refining the process and expanding the paid blogging model.
Joining one of these sponsored reviews marketplaces will give you the opportunity to write sponsored posts on a wide range of topics. Not all bloggers are willing to get paid to write about a specific product or website (because it might compromise the editorial credibility), but the ones who do are making good money out of it.
If your blog has a big audience you could also offer sponsored reviews directly, cutting off the commissions of the middleman.
List of sponsored reviews and paid blogging networks:

8. RSS Feed Ads
With the quick adoption of the RSS technology by millions of Internet users, website owners are starting to find ways to monetize this new content distribution channel.
Feedburber already has its own publisher network, and you can sign-up to start displaying CPM based advertising on your feed footer. Bidvertiser recently introduced a RSS feed ad option as well, with a PPC scheme.
Finally, some blogs are also opting to sell banners or sponsored messages on their feed directly. John Chow and Marketing Pilgrim are two examples.
Related links:

9. Sponsors for Single Columns or Events
If you website has specific columns or events (e.g., a weekly podcast, an interview series, a monthly survey, a special project) you could find companies to sponsor them individually.
This method increases the monetization options for website owner, while giving advertisers the possibility to target a more specific audience and with a reduced commitment.
Mashable illustrates the case well. They have several advertising options on the site, including the possibility to sponsor specific columns and articles, including the “Daily Poll” and the “Web 2.0 Invites.”
Problogger also runs group writing projects occasionally, and before proceeding he publicly announce the project asking for sponsors.
10.Premium Content
Some websites and blogs give away part of their content for free, and charge for access to the premium content and exclusive tools.
SEOMoz is a good example. They have a very popular blog that gives advice and information on wide range of SEO related topics. On top of that visitors can decide to become premium members. It costs $48 monthly and it grants them access to guides, tools and other exclusive material.
11. Private Forums
While the Internet is populated with free forums, there is also the possibility to create a private one where members need to pay a single or recurring fee to join.

SEO Blackhat charges $100 monthly from its members, and they have thousands of them. Obviously in order to charge such a price for a forum membership you need to provide real value for the members (e.g., secret techniques, tools, and so on).
Performancing also launched a private forum recently, focused on the networking aspect. It is called The Hive, and the monthly cost is $10.
These are just two examples. There are many possibilities to create a private and profitable forum, you just need to find an appealing angle that will make it worth for the members.
List of popular forum software:

12. Job Boards
All the popular blogs are trying to leverage job boards to make some extra income. Guy Kawasaki, ReadWriteWeb, Problogger… you name it.
Needless to say that in order to create an active and profitable job board you need first to have a blog focused on a specific niche, and a decent amount traffic.
The advantage of this method is that it is passive. Once you have the structure in place, the job listings will come naturally, and you can charge anywhere from $10 up to $100 for each.
List of popular job board software:

13. Marketplaces
Sitepoint is the online marketplace by excellence. Some websites and blogs, however, are trying to replicate that model on a smaller scale.
Depending on your niche, a market place that allows your visitors to buy, sell and trade products could work well. Over the time you could start charging a small fee for new product listings.
The problem with this method is that there are no standard software on the web, so you would need to hire a coder to get a marketplace integrated into your website.
You can see an example of a marketplaces being used on EasyWordpress and on Mashable.
14. Paid Surveys and Polls
There are services that will pay you money to run a small survey or poll on your website. The most popular one is called Vizu Answers.
Basically you need to sign up with them, and select the kind of polls that you want to run your site. Most of these services operate under a CPM model.
15. Selling or Renting Internal Pages
Million Dollar Wiki made this concept popular, but it was being used on the web for a long time around (check Pagerank10.co.uk for instance).
These websites sell for a single fee or rent for a recurring fee internal pages on their domain. Usually they have either high Pagerak or high traffic, so that people purchasing a page will be able to benefit in some way.
Implementing this method on a small blog would be difficult, but the concept is interesting and could be explored further.
16. Highlighted Posts from Sponsors
Techmeme probably pioneered this idea, but somehow it has not spread to other websites. The tech news aggregator displays editorial posts on the left column, and on the sidebar they have a section titled “Techmeme Sponsor Posts.”
On that section posts from the blog of the advertisers get highlighted, sending qualified traffic their way. Considering that the monthly cost for one spot is $5000 and that they have around 6 sponsors at any given time, it must be working well.
17. Donations
Placing a “Donate” link or button on a website can be an efficient way to earn money, especially if your blog is on a niche where readers learn and gain value from your content.
Personal development and productivity blogs, for instance, tend to perform well with donation based systems (one good example being Steve Pavlina).
A small variation of this method appeared sometime ago with the Buy Me a Beer plugin. This WordPress plugin enables you to insert a customized message at the bottom of each article, asking the readers to chip in for a beer or coffee.
18. In-text Adverting
In-text adverting networks like Kontera and Vibrant Media will place sponsored links inside your text. These links come with a double underline to differentiate them from normal links, and once the user rolls the mouse over the link the advertising will pop. Should the user click on it the site owner will make some money.
Some people make good money with this method, but others refrain from using it due to its intrusiveness. It is also interesting to note that very few mainstream websites have experimented with in-text advertising.
19. Pop-ups and Pop-unders
Pop-ups are a common yet annoying form of advertising on the Internet. If you are just trying to make a much money as possible from your website, you could experiment with them.
If you are trying to grow the traffic and generate loyal visitors, however, you probably should stay away from them. Just consider the hundreds of pop-up blockers out there: there is a reason why they are so popular.
Ad networks that use pop-ups:

20. Audio Ads
Also called PPP (Pay Per Play), this advertising method was introduce by Net Audio Ads. the concept is pretty simple: play a small audio advertising (usually 5 seconds) every time a visitor enters into your website. The user should not be able to stop it, creating a 100% conversion rate based on unique visitors.
The company is still rolling tests, but some users are reporting to get from a $4 to a $6 CPM. Regardless of the pay rate, though, this is a very intrusive form of advertising, so think twice before using it.
21. Selling the Website
Selling your website could be your last resource, but it has the potential to generate a big sum of money in a short period of time.
Market places on online forums like DigitalPoint and Sitepoint are always active with website buyers and sellers. Keep in mind that they most used parameter to determine the value of a website is the monthly revenue that it generates, multiplied by a certain number (the multiplier can be anything from 5 to 30, depending on the expectations of the seller, on the quality of the site, on the niche and other factors).
Some people also make money trading and flipping websites. They either create them from scratch or buy existing ones, and after some revamping they sell them for a profit.
Related links:

Indirect Methods

22. Selling an Ebook
Perhaps one of the oldest money making strategies on the web, using a website to promote a related ebook is a very efficient way to generate revenue.
You could either structure the website around the book itself, like SEOBook.com, or launch the ebook based on the success of the website, like FreelanceSwitch did we the book How to be a Rockstar Freelancer.
Related links:

23. Selling a Hardcover Book
Many authors and journalists leverage their blogs or websites to sell copies of hardcover books. Examples include Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell.
While most of these people were already renowned authors before they created their website, one could also follow the other way around. Lorelle VanFossen did exactly that with her Blogging Tips book. First she built her authority on the subject via her blog, and afterwards she published the book.
List of self publishing and publishing services:

24. Selling Templates or WordPress Themes
As more and more people decide to get an online presence, website templates and WordPress themes become hotter and hotter.
On this segment you have mainstream websites like TemplateMonster, as well as individual designers who decide to promote and sell their work independently.
Brian Gardner and Unique Blog Designs are two examples of websites that make money with the sales of premium and custom WordPress themes.
25. Offering Consulting and Related Services
Depending on your niche, you could make money by offering consulting and related services. If you are also the author of your blog, the articles and information that you will share will build your profile and possibly certify your expertise on that niche, making it easier to gain customers.
Chris Garrett used a similar strategy. First he created a highly influential blog on the blogging and new media niche, and afterwards he started offering consulting services to clients with related problems and needs.
26. Creating an Email List or Newsletter
Email lists and newsletters represent one of the most powerful marketing and money making tools on the Internet. They offer incredible conversion rates, and the possibility to call people to action in a very efficient way.
Creating a big list is a difficult task though, so if you have a popular website you could leverage it to increase the number of subscribers on your list.
Yaro Starak is a famous Internet marketer, and if you visit his blog you will notice that right on top he has a section encouraging visitors to subscribe to his email newsletter. Yaro generates five figures in revenues each month from his email newsletters, proving that this method works.
List of software to manage email newsletters:

27. Mentoring programs
People are willing to pay for someone or something that will teach them and give them knowledge (as opposed to mere information). Education is one of the biggest industries in the world, and the online landscape behaves in a similar way.
Creating a mentoring program related to the niche of your website could be very profitable if you manage to structure and promote it adequately. There is a wide range of media and tools that you can use to deliver the information, from text articles to audio and video lessons.
Brian Clark leveraged the success of Copyblogger to launch a mentoring program teaching people how to build membership and how to sell content online. The program is titled Teaching Sells, and it costs $97 monthly. Sounds expensive, but they have over 1,000 members.
28. Creating a conference around the website
If your website takes off and becomes an authority on its niche, you could create a conference around it. Depending on the size of your audience, the event could attract thousands of people, and you could make money directly from conference passes and sponsors.
Search Engine Land, for instance, created a series of conferences that visit several cities on the United States and on other countries as well. The conferences are called Search Marketing Expo, and the tickets and passes cost thousands of dollars.

Installing WordPress on SQL Server

2011-12-08T17:27:00.000+08:00

Before you read this article, please note: the easiest way to install WordPress on SQL Server or SQL Azure is to use the Getting Started page. If you’re still having trouble or want more details, read on!
These instructions assume you’re installing WordPress on Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2. If you’re installing WordPress in a Windows share hosting environment, many of these same concepts apply.
Here’s a summary of the steps:

1. Install the Prerequisites

Use the Microsoft Web Platform Installer. Be sure you have:

II7 or above (Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2)
PHP 5.2 or above
SQL Server Express 2008 w/Tools or above
PHP Driver for SQL Server v1.1 or above
URL Rewrite 2.0 or above

Get Products with Web Platform Installer

Click here to install all these products with the Web Platform Installer.
Click on the Get the Microsoft Web Platform button and accept the prompts to install WPI.

Click on the bar at the top of the browser to install the add-on.

Follow the onscreen prompts and grant permission for the site to open WPI.

Once the Web Platform Installer downloads and installs all the prerequisites, it will prompt you to configure your SQL Server Express install.

Choosing Mixed Mode Authentication and providing an (sa) password will make your web development easiest.
The Web Platform Installer will now download all the bits and prerequisites.

Once the download is complete, it will automatically install and configure the software.

Now you’re ready to run web applications on the Microsoft Web Platform.

2. Configure a Database

In this step, you’ll create a database and a database user for your WordPress install.
Start by running SQL Server Management Studio from your start menu.

You’ll be prompted to log on to SQL Server.

Connect to your database using Windows Authentication and .SQLExpress for the Server name.

Create a new database Login by expanding the Security. Right click on Logins to select New Login.

Supply a Login name; select SQL Server authentication; provide a Password and uncheck User must change password at next login. You can leave the rest of the defaults.
Now you need to create a database.

Create a new Database by right clicking on Databases to select New Database.

Enter a Database name and specify the Login name of the user you created above.
Now you’re ready to proceed with the WordPress install.

3. Download the WordPress on SQL Server Distribution

Go to the Download page and select the standard or Multi-User Distribution from the box on the right side of the page.

This will take you to the SourceForge download page for the current version.

If you try to save the ZIP file directly to your IIS directory, you’ll probably get a permissions error like below.

Save the ZIP somewhere else on your machine, extract the files and copy them into the C:inetpubwwwrootwp-sqlsrv folder.

4. Configure IIS

The most common issue I’ve discovered involves WordPress’ use of HTTP errors.

Enable IIS Detailed Error Messages

When trying to install WordPress for the first time,you might get an IIS 500—an internal server error that says,“There is a problem with the resource you are looking for, and it cannot be displayed”.

WordPress is designed to throw an HTTP 500 error if a wp-config.php file is not detected. The problem is that the default install of IIS 7 is overriding HTTP errors for external users as to now show detailed information about the server.
You can temporarily override this behavior during the installation process by telling IIS to show Detailed errors. Do this by creating a web.config file in the root of your WordPress install with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <system.webServer>
        <httpErrors errorMode="Detailed"/>
    </system.webServer>
</configuration>

Grant IIS Write Permissions to WordPress Folder

Next, you need to ensure your IIS has write permissions to your WordPress installation folder.
NOTE: If IIS does not have write permissions to your WordPress folder you will get caught in a loop where you enter your database credentials then get taken back to the initial installation screen.
By default IIS runs as IUSR so you must add this user with Write permission through Windows Explorer. Browse to the installation folder, right click on the wp-sqlsrv folder and select the Security tab.

Click the Edit button, select Add, then type IUSR for Enter the object names to select. Click on Check Names and IUSR should now be underlined.

When you click OK the top window will close. Make sure to give this user Write permissions by selecting the checkbox.

5. Install WordPress on SQL Server

Browse to the root of your WordPress install, which in my case is http://localhost/wp-sqlsrv/.

Follow the prompts until you’re asked for database information.

Specify the Database Name, User Name and Password you created while configuring the database. For the default SQL Server Express install, you will enter .SQLExpress for the Database Host.
Select the sqlsrv driver for Database Type. This will use the PHP Driver for SQL Server, which was developed and maintained by the SQL Server team.
You should see the screen below, with an option to Run the install.

If you don’t see this screen and are taken back to the first screen of the install, that means your web server doesn’t have permission to write to the directory

You can get information on IIS security here.
If the install is moving forward, you’ll just need to enter your blog information and receive the admin password.

Now WordPress should be up and running on SQL Server!

The last step is to update your web.config to remove the IIS Detailed errors and enable URL Rewrite.

6. Remove IIS Detailed Errors and Configure URL Rewrite

Remove detailed IIS error messages and add URL Rewrite rules by replacing the contents of your web.config with the following contents:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <system.webServer>
        <rewrite>
            <rules>
                <rule name="wordpress" patternSyntax="Wildcard">
                    <match url="*"/>
                    <conditions>
                        <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true"/>
                        <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true"/>
                    </conditions>
                    <action type="Rewrite" url="index.php"/>
                </rule>
            </rules>
        </rewrite>
    </system.webServer>
</configuration>

Now enjoy using WordPress on SQL Server!

iPad Programming Tutorial – Hello World++

2011-12-05T22:41:00.000+08:00

Introduction

Now, that the iPad has been released, I’m sure you are all scrambling for ideas on how to snag a piece of the maket in the imminent gold rush. iCodeBlog is going to help you on your journey with a series of iPad tutorials to come.
Since the iPad uses the same SDK as the iPhone, all of the code under the hood is almost identical. Actually, when looking at the new and changed API classes, you will realize that most of them are user interface related. This is good news for us since we have already been coding iPhone.
While this tutorial is called “Hello World”, it is really much more than that. I assume you already have working knowledge of iPhone/Objective-C programming.

What We Will Be Creating

In today’s tutorial, I will be showing you how to create an iPad project that uses the UISplitViewController to display content in 2 separate panes. We will also be touching on some of the new design/UI patterns and giving an overall introduction to iPad programming.
The project will be based on one of my earliest tutorials that displayed a list of fruit in a UITableView and drilled down when they were selected. We will be expanding on that example and creating something that will look like this.

It uses a UISplitViewController to display a UITableView on the left and a UIView with a UIImageView subview on the right. This project is actually quite simple to create as the template code provides much of the code we need to get started.

Getting Started

1. Make sure you have downloaded the 3.2 SDK form http://developer.apple.com/iphone/. The iPad simulator will come with this download.
2. Download the resources needed for this project and unzip them iPadHelloWorldResources.zip . (contains image files and a plist we will be using to load the images)

Creating The Project

Starting a project for the iPad is no different than starting one for the iPhone. When you open XCode and select File->New Project, you should notice the addition of a Split View-Based Application. Select this and name it iPadHelloWorld.

This will create a basic application with a UITableView on the left and a UIView on the right. It will even populate the table with some sample elements. It will add the following files to your project.

Here is a brief description of each of these files:

iPadHelloWorldAppDelegate – This is similar to every app delegate. If you look in the application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions method, you will see that the UISplitViewController is being allocated with the MasterViewController and DetailViewControllers.
MasterViewController – A UITableViewController, nothing fancy. It will be handling the view on the left hand side.
DetailViewController – This handles the content view that you see on the right hand side. We will be updating this as the user selects different rows in the table to the left. This simply houses a single view.

Go ahead and press Build and Run to check out the application. If you haven’t already done so, play around with the iPad contacts and settings apps as well.
Note: When you launch the application, you will only see the main view since the simulator runs in vertical mode. To see the views side-by-side, rotate the simulator by clicking “Hardware -> Rotate Left/Right”. You can also press CMD->Arrow Left/Right on the keyboard.

Importing The Project Images

Once you have had some time to play with the new iPad project, you will now need to import the images needed for this project. After downloading and unzipping the files in from this tutorial, drag them into the project folder called “Resources-iPad”.
XCode will prompt you to copy the files, check yes and click OK.

Make sure you include all 4 images files as well as the file named fruits.plist.

Displaying The List Of Fruits

Displaying our fruits list is no different than displaying data in any other UITableView. Let’s begin by opening MasterViewController.h and adding a declaration for our fruits array.

#import
 
@class DetailViewController;
 
@interface MasterViewController : UITableViewController {
    DetailViewController *detailViewController;
    NSArray * fruits;
}
 
@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet DetailViewController *detailViewController;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSMutableArray *fruits;
 
@end

As you can see, there is nothing new here. We simply declare our fruits array and create a property for it.
We will be loading the fruits from the plist file that you imported into your project in the last step. Loading content from a plist file is a very quick and easy solution when you don’t require a database.
Open up MasterViewController.m and add the following line of code to your viewDidLoad method.

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];
    self.fruits = [[NSArray arrayWithContentsOfFile:[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"fruits" ofType:@"plist"]] retain];
}

The file fruits.plist is essentially an array that has been written out to a file. If you open it up, it looks very similar to XML. Now that our fruits array has been populated, let’s implement each of the UITableView delegate and datasource methods to populate the table.
UITableView datasource methods

- (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)aTableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section {
    // Return the number of rows in the section.
    return [fruits count];
}
 
- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
 
    static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"CellIdentifier";
 
 // Dequeue or create a cell of the appropriate type.
 UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
    if (cell == nil) {
        cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier] autorelease];
        cell.accessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryNone;
    }
 
    // Get the object to display and set the value in the cell.
    cell.textLabel.text = [self.fruits objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];
    return cell;
}

Nothing special… We first tell the tableview that we want fruits.count (4 in this case) number of rows.
Next, we display the name of the fruit in each tableview cell. If you want to learn more on UITableViews
UITableView delegate methods

- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)aTableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
 
    /*
     When a row is selected, set the detail view controller's detail item to the item associated with the selected row.
     */
    detailViewController.detailItem = [self.fruits objectAtIndex: indexPath.row];
}

Here, we are simply setting the detailItem property of the detailViewController to the selected fruit. We will discuss this property later in this section, but for now all you need to know is that its type is id.
At this point, go ahead and press Build and Run to see your code in action. You should see something that looks like this:

It displays the list of fruits, but nothing happens when you select a cell (well the title of the detailView may change).
Now that we have our list of fruits displayed, we now need to implement the code to display their corresponding image.

Displaying The Fruits

Displaying the selected fruit is actually quite simple. The first thing we need to do is add a UIImageView to our detailView.
Start by adding the IBOutlet for the image view. Open up DetailViewController.h and add the following code:

@interface DetailViewController : UIViewController  {
 
    UIPopoverController *popoverController;
    UINavigationBar *navigationBar;
 
    id detailItem;
 
    IBOutlet UIImageView * fruitImageView;
}
 
@property (nonatomic, retain) UIPopoverController *popoverController;
@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UINavigationBar *navigationBar;
 
@property (nonatomic, retain) id detailItem;
 
@property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UIImageView * fruitImageView;
 
@end

All of the code here comes with the template except the code to add the IBOutlet UIImageView. Once you have added this open up DetailView.xib in interface builder.
Add a UIImageView on to the view and size it to 500×500.

Now, click on the File’s Owner object and open the connection inspector (Tools -> connection inspector).
Drag from your imageView IBOutlet to the UIImageView and release. The UIImageView is now connected to your outlet.
Note: If you want the images to not skew, set the content mode of the image view (in the attributes inspector) to Aspect Fit.
Now that the imageview has been connected, it’s time to write the code that updates it. Close Interface Builder and open the file DetailViewController.m and add the following lines to the setDetailItem method:

- (void)setDetailItem:(id)newDetailItem {
    if (detailItem != newDetailItem) {
        [detailItem release];
        detailItem = [newDetailItem retain];
 
        // Update the view.
        navigationBar.topItem.title = detailItem;
 NSString * imageName = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@.png",detailItem];
 [self.fruitImageView setImage:[UIImage imageNamed:imageName]];
    }
 
    if (popoverController != nil) {
        [popoverController dismissPopoverAnimated:YES];
    }
}

Most of this code has been added by the template and I won’t discuss it too much in this tutorial. But for now, the important additions are the lines that load the image based on the name of the fruit and the one below it that sets the image property of the image view.
There you have it! Build and go and the application should function as mentioned. Here is another screenshot of the final product.

Another Cool Feature Of SplitViewController

When in vertical mode, the SplitViewController gives you another new UI element called the UIPopOverView. Collin will have a tutorial up soon on this view, but the figure below shows you what I’m talking about.

When the device is vertical, it will automatically rotate your view and provide a UIPopoverView when the “Master List” button is pretty. (BTW this button is also customizable).

HowTo: Configure WordPress To Use A Content Delivery Network (CDN)

2011-12-04T21:23:00.000+08:00

Research shows that if your web pages take longer than 5 seconds to load, you lose 50% of your viewers and sales. You can speed up your wordpress blog by using a CDN to display content to users faster and more efficiently. You can distributes common files or content such as css, javascript, uploaded images, videos and much more through a CDN, which serves the content from the closest cdn edge server to the end-user. In this tutorial, I will explains how to configure WordPress, Apache/Lighttpd webserver, Bind dns server to use a CDN to distribute your common files such as css, js, user uploaded files and lighten load on your web server.

What Is A CDN?

A content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is a system of computers containing copies of data, placed at various points in a network so as to maximize bandwidth for access to the data from clients throughout the network. A client accesses a copy of the data near to the client, as opposed to all clients accessing the same central server, so as to avoid bottleneck near that server. A cdn will increase speed and efficiency for your blog.

What Are The Advantages Of Using CDN Over Central Server?

Speed - All common media files distributed via CDN. For example, files.cyberciti.biz configured as CDN subdomain. Everything hosted on files.cyberciti.biz is geographically closer to the end-user. If you run dns query over files.cyberciti.biz, it will return an IP geographically closer to you.
$ host files.cyberciti.biz $ ping files.cyberciti.biz
Security - It adds additional level of security.
Availability - CDNs offers 100% availability, even with large power, network or hardware outages.

Different Types Of CDNs

A CDN can use various methods to distribute your content such as:

Peer to peer CDN - This is used to distribute latest episode of a soap opera (movies / TV shows) or some sort of software patch/update in short period of time to large number of users.
Origin Pull CDN - This is useful to distribute small files such as javascript, css, images, text, pdf, .doc, .xls etc. This is recommended for WordPress. All content is stored on your own server called "Origin Pull Host". This host is then registered with the CDN. When the first user requests the content, it is pulled to the CDN network from your host and delivered via CDN to the closest point to that end user. The content is cached on CDN with a TTL (or max age and Etags is also used). This kind of configuration requires storage on your own server and not on the CDN server. The first requesting user has an average CDN experience, while later users have very fast user delivery experience. This is recommended for file size <= 10MB.
PoP Pull CDN - You need to upload content to the CDN host server, where it is stored for delivery. This option is little expensive as you need to purchase the CDN storage with provider along with bandwidth. This is recommend for large files and video streaming etc. You need to upload files to the CDN server using FTP / SCP or API.

Content Delivery Service Providers

A list of some of the larger content delivery network providers. Do your own research before purchasing CDN service from any one of the following provider:

Amazon CloudFront
Akamai
CacheFly
EdgeCast Networks
Internap
Level 3 Communications
Limelight Networks

Our Sample Setup

Blog URL : http://nixcraft.in/ - This is hosted on your own server using Apache, Lighttpd, IIS or Nginx.
Origin Pull URL : http://www-origin.nixcraft.in/ - This is hosted on your own server. You need to configure your web server, wordpress and dns server to use this. This is called as "Origin Pull Host" which is a CDN method by which content is pulled from your web server.
CDN URL : http://files.nixcraft.in/ - This is a cdn url hosted by one of the above CDN provider. This url always point to an edge server via proprietor DNS hacks. files.nixcraft.in must be set as CNAME records which will point to domain names of CDN server.
CDN DNS CNAME : files.nixcraft.in.example.com - example.com is one of the above CDN provider. This is must be set as CNAME for files.nixcraft.in

Step # 1: Purchase CDN Service

The cost varies between CDN providers. Check CDN service providers website for more information. Next, you need to use service providers "control panel" to configure an "Origin Pull Host" for each domain. In other words configure files.nixcraft.in in origin pull mode. The control panel will also provide your an option to setup CDN dns CNAME. You need to use same CNAME in step # 2. Once the configuration is active and the CNAME is resolving, calls to files.nixcraft.in will be cached from www-origin.nixcraft.in.

Step # 2: Update Your DNS Server

Assuming that you are using BIND dns server edit your zone file and add entry as follows:

; CDN CNAME mapping for files.nixcraft.in
files                3660       IN CNAME files.nixcraft.in.example.com.
; Your www-origin url (note nixcraft.in is also hosted on same server IP 123.1.2.3)
www-origin      3600       IN A 123.1.2.3

Reload your named:
# rndc reload
To keep your configuration simple use same web server for origin pull domain and main domain i.e. host both www-origin.nixcraft.in and nixcraft.in on same web server. This allows you to directly upload and map files to the CDN server.
Please note that you can setup CNAME and origin host names using your ISPs DNS control panel too.

Step # 3: Configure Origin Pull Web Server

You need to configure www-origin.nixcraft.in as follows:

Origin pull DocumentRoot: /home/httpd/www-origin.nixcraft.in - All your .css, .js and uploaded files are hosted here.
Server Blog DocumentRoot: /home/httpd/nixcraft.in - All your wordpress files are hosted here.
MaxAge: Set cache-lifetime headers for static files for cdn network.
Etags: An ETag (entity tag) is part of HTTP, the protocol for the World Wide Web. It is a response header that may be returned by an HTTP/1.1 compliant web server and is used to determine change in content at a given URL. When a new HTTP response contains the same ETag as an older HTTP response, the client can conclude that the content is the same without further downloading.

Here is a sample Lighttpd lighttpd.conf entry for the same:

# Configure ETags
etag.use-inode = "enable"
etag.use-mtime = "enable"
etag.use-size = "enable"
static-file.etags = "enable"
 
###### CDN FILES via WordPress Upload ##############
$HTTP["host"]  == "www-origin.nixcraft.in"{
        server.document-root = "/home/httpd/www-origin.nixcraft.in"
        accesslog.filename         = "/var/log/lighttpd/cdn.access.log"
 #  Set max age
        $HTTP["url"] =~ "^/" {
            expire.url = ( "" => "access 60 days" )
        }
}

Here is a sample Apache httpd.conf file:

<VirtualHost www-origin.nixcraft.in>
 ServerAdmin webmaster@nixcraft.in
 DocumentRoot /home/httpd/www-origin.nixcraft.in
 ServerName files.nixcraft.in
 ServerAlias file.nixcraft.in
 ErrorLog /var/logs/httpd/cdn-error_log
 CustomLog /var/logs/httpd/cdn-access_log common
 
 # Files in this directory will be cached for 1 week only.
 # After 1 week, CDN server will check if the contents has been modified or not.
 # If not modified, Apache will send 304 "Not Modified" header
 <Directory "/userimages">
  Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800, must-revalidate"
 </Directory>
 
 # Disable ETag as we are on cluster Apache server
 <Directory "/pdfs">
  Header unset ETag
  FileETag None
 </Directory>
 
 # Do not cache
 <Directory "/patches">
  Header Set Cache-Control "max-age=0, no-store"
 </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Step # 4: Configure WordPress To Upload Files To CDN Server

Visit your wordpress dashboard url (e.g., http://nixcraft.in/wp-admin/)
Click on Settings > Miscellaneous Settings
Update it as follows to point out to our configuration paths and CDN domains

Fig.01: Wordrpess Miscellaneous Settings - Set CDN URLS

All your uploaded files are saved on your server at /home/httpd/www-origin.nixcraft.in directory. Which is mapped to CDN via origin pull method. In this example:

A user requests for http://files.nixcraft.in/uploads/2010/04/test.png
First pulled from http://www-origin.nixcraft.in/uploads/2010/04/test.png by your CDN server
It is cached at CDN server for 60 days (or as per max age rule)
Rest of all user gets image from the CDN server.

Step # 5: Configure WordPress Theme To Serve CSS / JS From The CDN Server

First, copy your .css, and .js files to /home/httpd/www-origin.nixcraft.in directory:

mkdir -p /home/httpd/www-origin.nixcraft.in/{css,js}
cp -av /home/httpd/nixcraft.in/wp-content/themes/mythemename/*.css /home/httpd/www-origin.nixcraft.in/css
cp -av /home/httpd/nixcraft.in/wp-content/themes/mythemename/*.js /home/httpd/www-origin.nixcraft.in/js

Finally, edit your theme (header.php and footer.php) to point to CDN location for stylesheet and/or .js files by visiting "Manage Themes" option from the wordpress dashboard:

 
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://files.nixcraft.in/css/style.css" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://files.nixcraft.in/css/images.css" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" />

Results

The end result is pretty nice. Here are sample website load speed upgrades after using a CDN:

Fig.02: Alexa Showing Website loading speed

Fig.03: Pingdom Tools Showing Website loading speed

See 6 Tools To Find Out Website Load Speed

How Do I Test Images And Other Media Files Are Cached Or Not By CDN?

Use curl to test HTTP headers (look for Etags, max-age and Expires headers):

$ curl -I http://files.nixcraft.in/css/styles.css

$ curl -I http://files.nixcraft.in/uploades/2010/04/test.png

Sample outputs:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: image/png
Accept-Ranges: bytes
ETag: "1482142335"
Last-Modified: Fri, 02 Apr 2010 09:11:53 GMT
Content-Length: 33143
Server: lighttpd
Cache-Control: max-age=2588785
Expires: Sun, 02 May 2010 09:13:50 GMT
Date: Fri, 02 Apr 2010 10:07:25 GMT
Connection: keep-alive

Getting Started with My.Blogs

2011-11-23T18:51:00.000+08:00

Getting Started

To get started using My.Blogs, download the sample code to your local machine and extract the files associated with the sample to a directory on your local machine. Follow these steps to start using My.Blogs to work with weblog feeds programmatically.

Start by opening the "\My.Blogs VS Snippet and Add In" from the code you extracted above.
Double-click on My.Blogs.vsi and accept all the default options. This will install a new Template to the Add New Item dialog box called "My.Blogs".
Open Visual Studio 2005 and select File|New Project. Select Visual Basic 2005 as your language, Windows for the Project Type, and Windows Application as the Template.
Name your project "UsingMyBlogs."
In the Solution Explorer, right click on the UsingMyBlog project and select Add|New Item...
In the Templates List, scroll down until you get to My Templates and select My.Blogs. Click Add.
In Solution Explorer, notice that a file called MyBlogs.vb has been added to your project.
In Solution Explorer, double-click on the My Project folder and select the References tab. Note that you now have a reference to the MyBlogs.dll. This was done for you by adding the My.Blogs template to your project.
If your reference was not made correctly, you'll need to set it up manually. Save the project and copy the MyBlogs.dll to the debug/bin folder and add a reference to MyBlogs.dll using the My Projects folder.
Double-click on Form1.vb in the Solution Explorer to open it in the form designer.
Drag a DataGridView onto Form1 and set the following properties:
1. Name = "BlogEntries"
2. AllowUserAddRows = False
3. AllowUserDeleteRows = False
4. ReadOnly = True
5. SelectionMode = FullRowSelect
Drag a button on the form under the BlogEntries DataViewGrid.
Double-click the button to start writing code behind the ClickEvent.

Type in the following code in the Button1_Click event handler:

Dim MyFeed As MyBlogs.Feed

        MyFeed = My.Blogs.Read("http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/Rss.aspx")

        Me.BlogEntries.DataSource = MyFeed.Entries

That's all the code you need to read from a blog feed and populate the entries into a grid. The Read method returns a Feed object that represents the entries for a given RSS/ATOM/RDF feed at a given URL. The Feed.Entries property returns a BindingList(Of FeedEntry), which allows you to bind the list directly controls like the DataGridView.
Run the application. It should look like the following:

Figure 1. A simple Windows Forms Application using My.Blogs
If you look at the Title column and compare it to the blog entries at http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/rss.aspx, you'll note that you have now loaded a live RSS feed into your sample application with three lines of code!

Close the application and add another button to the form. Double-click that button and add the following code to Button2_Click:

myFeed = My.Blogs.Read("http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/Rss.aspx", False, _
        New Date(2005, 7, 1))

    Me.EntriesGridView.DataSource = myFeed.Entries

You can see that this overload of the Read method takes two arguments. The first is a Boolean for whether you want to download comments for each feed. The second is a date. This allows you to only retrieve entries on or after a certain date. This is useful if you are creating an application that only reads feed entries since the last time you performed a Read. Run the application and click on Button2. Your application should look like this:

Figure 2. A Simple Windows Forms Application Reading Feeds from A Date
Only entries dated on or after 7/1/2005 were returned. Close the applications.

Drop another button onto the form and add the following code to the Button3_Click event handler.

Private MyFeed As MyBlogs.Feed

    Private Sub Button3_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, 
ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button3.Click
        MyFeed = My.Blogs.Read("http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/Rss.aspx", True)

        Me.BlogEntries.DataSource = MyFeed.Entries
    End Sub

Note the promotion of MyFeeds to a module lever variable. Also note that we're using yet another overload of My.Blogs.Read that accepts the feed URL as well as a Boolean for retrieving feed comments. We've set it to True in order to retrieve comments.
Add another DataGridView to Form1 and place it under the buttons. Set the following properties:
1. Name = "BlogEntryComments"
2. AllowUserAddRows = False
3. AllowUserDeleteRows = False
4. ReadOnly = True
5. SelectionMode = FullRowSelect
Right-click on Form1 and select View Code. Add a new event handler for the BlogEntries control by selecting Blog_Entries in the Class drop down and SelectionChanged in the method drop down. You should have a new event handler called BlogEntries_SelectionChanged. Add the following code:
```
Dim SelectedEntry As MyBlogs.FeedEntry = 
MyFeed.Entries(BlogEntries.CurrentRow.Index)

        If SelectedEntry.Comments IsNot Nothing Then
            Me.BlogEntryComments.DataSource = SelectedEntry.Comments.Entries
        End If
```
Run the application. It should look like the figure below.

Figure 3: Reading Feeds and Their Comments
When you select an entry in the entry grid that has comments associated with it, the comments show up in the BlogEntryComments grid. Your application is now reading blog entries and their comments from a RSS feed. Close the application.
MyBlog supports posting to blogs as well. In order to post to a blog you'll need the following information:
1. The blog URL.
2. The ID you use to sign in to that blog.
3. The password you use to sign in to that blog.

Add another button to the form and double-click on the button to create the Button4_Click event handler. Add the following code:

My.Blogs.PublishEntry(_
        MyBlogs.PublishFormat.CommunityServerViaMetaWebLogAPI, _
    "http://myblogserver/myblogid", "myblogid", "password", _
        "Testing via UsingMyBlogs", "This is the entry posted " + _
        "from trying out MyBlogs!")

    MyFeed = My.Blogs.Read("http://myblogserver/myblogid/rss.aspx", True)

    Me.BlogEntries.DataSource = MyFeed.Entries

Run the application and click on Button4. When the BlogEntries DataGridView is populated, you'll see the blog entry you posted using My.Blogs. It may take a few minutes for the new post to show up. The first argument you pass to PublishEntry is a value from the PublishFormat Enum, telling My.Blogs what publish format you're going to use to post the entry. More on that later. Close the application.
MyBlogs supports reading and writing OPML lists of blog feeds. OPML is an XML schema for managing outlines, such as groups of blog feed addresses. A sample OPML file, appropriately named sample.opml, is supplied in the root of the sample code. Copy it to the \bin\debug directory of UsingBlogs.
Next, drop another button onto Form1 and add an event handler by double-clicking on the button.

Add the following code to the Button5_Click event handler.

Dim SampleBlogs As Generic.List(Of MyBlogs.BlogGroup) = My.Blogs.ReadOpml( _
        My.Computer.FileSystem.CurrentDirectory + "\" + "sample.opml")

    Dim SampleBlogInfo As MyBlogs.BlogInfo = SampleBlogs(0).Item(0)

    myFeed = My.Blogs.Read(SampleBlogInfo.FeedUrl)

    Me.EntriesGridView.DataSource = myFeed.Entries

This code deserves some explanation. OPML files allow you to group information about blog feeds into groups. My.Blogs reflects that grouping by returning a List(Of MyBlogs.BlogGroup) that you can use to get individual instances of the MyBlogs.BlogInfo class, which provide information about an individual feed (such as its URL). The code above reads the OPML file, uses the first BlogInfo to get a feed URL and then loads the feed into the EntriesGridView.
Run the application. You will see the feed entries for the first entry of the OPML file in the DataGridView. Close the application.

Finally, My Blogs allows you to write OPML files as well. Drop another button onto Form1 and double-click on the form to add an event handler. Add the following code to Button6_Click.

Dim SampleBlogs As New Generic.List(Of MyBlogs.BlogGroup)

        Dim MyBlogGroup As New MyBlogs.BlogGroup
        Dim MyBlogInfo As New MyBlogs.BlogInfo()

        MyBlogInfo.FeedUrl = "http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/Rss.aspx"
        MyBlogInfo.Title = "VB Team Blog"
        MyBlogInfo.Url = "http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam"

        MyBlogGroup.Add(MyBlogInfo)
        SampleBlogs.Add(MyBlogGroup)

        My.Blogs.WriteOpml(SampleBlogs, My.Computer.FileSystem.CurrentDirectory + "\" + "WriteSample.opml")

Just like the last example, we use a MyBlogs.BlogInfo class to store the info about a feed. We then add that BlogInfo to a BlogGroup and use the My.Blogs.WriteOpml method to write the OPML file to disk. Open the OPML file from the \bin\debug directory to get an idea of what OPML looks like.

Congratulations! In only a few minutes, and with only a few lines of code, you've used My.Blogs to write code to perform common blog feed operations in code.

Using My.Blogs Windows Form Walkthrough

Before we take a look at how My.Blogs works under the hood, let's take a look at what an application based on My.Blogs and see what it can do. Follow these steps to get started using an application based on My.Blogs.

Reading Feeds

Under the directory where the sample code was unzipped, open \My.Blogs Windows Sample\MyReader.sln.
Run the application.
MyReader is based on a communication application starter kit included with this sample, \Misc. Sample Files\Communication Application.vsi, which allows you to quickly create applications with an Office Outlook 2003 look and feel.
Start using MyReader by subscribing to some blog feeds. You can do this through an OPML file or by entering a URL for an RSS, ATOM, or RDF feed.
1. OPML—You can load feeds from another reader by exporting an OPML file of feeds and importing it into MyReader. For example, select File/Import Subscriptions and select the path of the sample.opml file supplied in the root of the sample code directory.
2. By URL—Select File/New Feed and enter the URL of a valid RSS, ATOM, or RDF feed (such as http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/rss.aspx).
At this point, you should see your feed(s) in the Feeds list box. Select a feed by clicking on it in the Feeds list on the left side of the UI and then select an entry in the right side of the UI. You will see the contents of the entry in the bottom half of the entry pane.
You can also group your feeds to make easier to manage. Select File/New/Group... and give the group a name. To add a feed to the group, select the group and add the feed as you did above.

Posting to Blogs

To post entries to your blog, you need to provide some key information to be used by the My.Blogs code running in MyReader. Select the Blog Info... toolbar button to supply the necessary information. Enter the following information based on your blog:
1. User ID—This is the user ID that you use to log into your blog server.
2. Password—The password you use to log into your blog server.
3. Publish Protocol—How you'd like to post to your blog server.
  - Community Server using a Blog URL: If you are using Community Server (http://www.telligent.com/), you can just enter your blog URL (for example http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam) and My.Blogs will calculate the service endpoint for you. Select this option in order to post using that method.
  - Metablog API through a Service URL—If you are using a server other than Community Server that supports the MetaBlog API, enter the Metablog API service URL here. For example, http://blogs.msdn.com/metablogapi.aspx. Select this option in order to post by means of this method.
4. Blog URL/Service URL—The URL that corresponds to the selection you made above.
5. Blog ID—For the Metablog API selection, you need to supply the blog ID. Most often, it's the directory name of your blog. For example, if your blog is http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam, your Blog ID would be vbteam.
After providing information about your blog, you're ready to post an entry. Click the Write to Blog button. The reading pane changes into a blog entry pane. Enter the title of the entry and the content of the entry and click the Publish button. If you entered your blog information correctly, you will be able to go to the blog (or the feed if you've added it to MyReader) and see the post.

There are some other great samples included with MyBlogs. Take a deeper look at the MyReader.sln in order to see how to consume blog feed functionality in a Windows Forms application. In the "My.Blogs Web Sample" folder you'll see a sample Web site that uses My.Blogs to provide blog reading functionality to an ASP.NET 2.0 application. In the "My.Blogs Office Outlook Add-In" folder there is an example of using My.Blogs in order to provide blog functionality within Outlook 2003 using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the Microsoft Office System. One thing that you'll notice is that the design of My.Blogs allows each application, regardless of whether the application is a Windows Forms application, Web application, or Outlook Add-In, to provide blog feed access with some simple calls to My.Blogs.

Understading My.Blogs

In order to understand how My.Blogs works, you really need to look at three things; how My.Blogs extends the My feature, how the Blogs class provides the implementation of My.Blogs, and how publishing and reading are accomplished.

Adding Blogs to the My Feature.

If you're new to Visual Basic 2005, you're probably new to the My feature. My provides quick access to common development tasks and common information through an easy-to-use object hierarchy. The great thing about My is that you can extend it using classes of your own design.
To access the Blogs class (which provides the actual implementation) through the My feature, you need to add a key piece of code to the consuming application. In the previous sample, that key piece of code was provided in the MyBlogs.vb file when we added the MyBlogs template to the project.

Namespace My
    
    <Global.Microsoft.VisualBasic.HideModuleName()> _
    Module MyBlogs
        
        Private _blogs As New ThreadSafeObjectProvider(Of Global.MyBlogs.Blogs)

        Public ReadOnly Property Blogs() As Global.MyBlogs.Blogs
            Get
                Return _blogs.GetInstance()
            End Get
        End Property

    End Module

End Namespace

This code is pretty straightforward. Extending My is mainly a matter of adding a property to the My namespace. That property returns an instance of the Blogs class wrapped in a ThreadSafeObjectProvider, which provides a thread safe instance of Blogs to each request. See the article "Simplify Common Tasks by Customizing the My Namespace" for more details (a link to the article is provided).

The Blogs Class

Let's take a look at the Blogs class to see the actual implementation of the blog posting and feed reading functionality provided in My.Blogs. Open the "My.Blogs.sln" solution in the "My.Blogs DLL Source Code" folder. Take a look at the class diagram ClassDiagram1.cd and look at the Blogs class.

Figure 4. The Blogs Class Diagram

As you'd expect, the implementation mimics what is provided by My.Blogs. If you look at the methods themselves in code, you'll notice one thing of interest. The Blogs class uses a Factory-like pattern in order to provide the function of reading feeds using varied feed formats.
Let's take a look at the Read method. We'll examine the simplest form of the Read method, since all the other overloads follow the same pattern. Open the MyBlogs.vb file in the solution to see the Blogs class. The implementation of Read is here:

Public Function Read(ByVal Url As String) As Feed
        Return MyBlogs.Feed.Read(Url, False)
    End Function

If you follow this to the Feed class in Feed.vb, you'll note that the Feed class gets the feed XML from the URL passed to Blogs.Read() and returns an instance of a class that represents the specific feed format.

Public Shared Function Read(ByVal url As String, _
        ByVal loadComments As Boolean, ByVal subscriptionDate As Date) As Feed

        Dim format As FeedFormat
        Dim feed As Feed = Nothing
        Dim xml As XmlReader = Nothing
        Dim client As New System.Net.WebClient()

        Dim stream As IO.Stream = Nothing

        Try
            stream = client.OpenRead(url)
            xml = XmlReader.Create(stream)
            format = GetFeedFormat(xml)

            Select Case format
                Case FeedFormat.Atom
                    feed = New Atom.AtomFeed
                    feed.Load(xml)
                Case FeedFormat.RDF
                    feed = New Rdf.RdfFeed()
                    feed.Load(xml)
                Case FeedFormat.RSS
                    feed = New Rss.RssFeed()
                    feed.Load(xml, subscriptionDate)
            End Select
        Catch e As Exception
            Throw e
        Finally
            If xml IsNot Nothing Then
                xml.Close()
            End If
            If stream IsNot Nothing Then
                stream.Close()
            End If
        End Try

        If feed IsNot Nothing Then
            feed.ShouldDownloadComments = loadComments
            feed.LoadComments()
            feed.FeedUrl = url
        End If

        Return feed

    End Function

You can see the relationship between Feed and the different subclasses of Feed that provide specific feed implementations in the following diagram.

Figure 5. Feeds and FeedEntry Diagram

FeedEntry provides the implementation of individual entries in a feed and works the same way.
Extending Read to support more formats is just a matter of adding a value to the FeedFormat Enum, providing a new subclass of Feed and FeedEntry, as well as providing the specific implementation of that format.
Publish works in the same way. Here is the code from the Blogs class that provides the basic Publish implementation. When calling PublishEntry, you need to pass a value from the PublishEntry Enum so the right publish implementation class is created.

Public Sub PublishEntry(ByVal Format As PublishFormat, _
        ByVal BlogURL As String, ByVal UserName As String, _
        ByVal Password As String, ByVal Title As String, _
        ByVal Description As String)

        PublishProvider.PublishEntry(Format, BlogURL, UserName, _
            Password, Title, Description, True)
    End Sub

Again, the PublishProvider class provides the actual implementation by using the PublishFormat Enum to dictate what class is actually created to do the actual publishing.

Public Shared Sub PublishEntry(ByVal format As PublishFormat, ByVal 
Address As String, ByVal UserName As String, ByVal Password As String, 
ByVal Title As String, ByVal Description As String, ByVal IsNewEntry As Boolean)
        Dim provider As PublishProvider = PublishProvider.Create(format)
        provider.PublishEntry(Address, UserName, Password, Title, Description)
    End Sub


    Friend Shared Function Create(ByVal format As PublishFormat) As PublishProvider
        'Create http request and send it to server
        Dim provider As PublishProvider = Nothing
        Select Case format
            Case PublishFormat.Unknown
                Throw New System.Exception("PublishFormat.Unknown")
            Case PublishFormat.MetaWebLogAPI
                provider = New MetaWebLogPublishProvider()
            Case PublishFormat.CommunityServerViaMetaWebLogAPI
                provider = New MetaWebLogPublishProvider()
            Case Else
                Throw New System.Exception()
        End Select
        Return provider
    End Function

If you look at ClassDiagram1.cd again, you'll see that PublishProvider follows the same pattern as the Feed class.

Figure 6. Publish Provider Diagram

Currently, only the MetaWeblog API is supported for Telligent's Community Server using the MetaWebLogPublishProvider subclass, but you could easily extend the PublishProvider to support other APIs or other servers by providing a new subclass with a new implementation.

Conclusion

The My.Blogs sample is great from a couple of points of view. First, it provides a great example of how you can extend My to provide a very clean and intuitive way of accessing common functionality throughout your code. Second, it's a great sample application that you can easily extend in order to build a full featured blog utility, whether you want to work with blogs on your desktop, from a browser or even inside Outlook. Enjoy!

Mass ASP.Net SQL Injection Infects Thousands Of Websites

2011-10-31T16:53:00.000+08:00

Hackers have successfully infected about 180,000 websites based on Microsoft's ASP.Net platform with malware from jjghui.com/urchin.js. (SQL injection) which is similar to Lizamoon mass infection that spread terror among the masses a few months ago.

The attack, that started on the 9th of October, has been successful in affecting almost 1.5k sites, which have now been blacklisted, and about 80k+ pages on Google index have a JavaScript malware pointing to it, according to Google.

The visitors of six particular languages are highly vulnerable to the attack--English, German, French, Italian, Polish, and Breton, seen from the following deobfuscated script:

This causes the browser to load an iframe with one of two remote sites:
www3.strongdefenseiz.in and www2.safetosecurity.rr.nu. From there, the iframe plants malware on the visitor's PC via a number of browser drive-by exploits.

This exploit will load even if the visitor doesn't open a file or clicks on a link, which makes it perfect as the "affectee" remains unaware of the attack. The attackers are, however, using exploits that have already been discovered with the concerned patches available. Hence, the target can only be achieved if the visitor is using an outdated, unpatched browser without the latest version of Adobe PDF or Adobe Flash or Java.

Currently, only six out of 43 can detect this malware. These are AntiVir, ByteHero, Fortinet, Jiangmin, McAfee and McAfee-GW-Edition.

What is interesting is that the registration information for this domain is the same as the one used on the earlier Lizamoon domains:

Technical Contact:
James Northone jamesnorthone@hotmailbox.com
+1.5168222749 fax: +1.5168222749
128 Lynn Court
Plainview NY 11803
us

jjghui.com resolves to IP 146.185.248.3 (AS3999), which is in Russia. www3.strongdefenseiz.in resolves to 75.102.21.121 (AS36352), which is in the US and hosted by HostForWeb.com. www2.safetosecurity.rr.nu resolves to IP 67.208.74.71 (AS33597), which is in the US and hosted by InfoRelayOnlineSystems.

Which leads us to think that this may be the work of the infamous "Lizamoon mass infection" attackers.

1. ASP and ASP.NET websites are injected with the following script (text is here):

2. Contents of urchin.js is as seen below

3. The above script decodes to the following:

How to get IP address of another computer remotely

2011-10-13T16:31:00.002+08:00

Hello friends, today i will explain you how to get IP address of any computer remotely. Using some very basic tricks we can find the IP address of any remote computer and then you can start your further hacking into the remote system like port scanning and finding vulnerabilities to enter in to the system and hack it. There are several methods to get an IP address of the victim but i will share few and specially the best one's that can tell you IP address in just few clicks and also all are free methods and special thing is about it is all are manual methods that means you did not require any tool.

How to find or get Ip address of somebody else remotely

4 ways to get the IP address of the Victim or another Computer:

1. Using PHP notification Script

2. Using Blogs and Websites

3. Using Read Notify service

4. Sniffing during Gmail and yahoo chat sessions

As we are here to learn concepts so i will first explain what is an IP address and what's its importance. So friends very basic question What is an IP address? Why its important for hackers and security professionals?

What is an IP address?

Basically IP address (Internet Protocol address) is a unique numerical value that is assigned to any computer or printer on a computer network that uses an internet protocol for communication purpose. Protocol is basically rules( for Network its rules for communication).

IP address serves for two basic purposes:

1. Host or network interface identification

2. Location Addressing

For exploring more about IP addressing read on wikipedia.

How to Find IP address of another computer?

1. Using PHP notification Script

Using this Notification script you can get the IP address in just seconds. Steps of using this PHP script:

a. Download the PHP notify script and extract files.

b. Now you will get two files IP.html and index.php . You need to upload these two files to any free web hosting server.

Example: i used www.my3gb.com to upload these two files. Create an account there and upload these two files there as shown below.

c. Now you will need to send the link of index.php to the victim whose password you want to get. to get the link click on index.php shown in above snapshot. Now a new window will open copy the link in the address bar and send to the victim whose IP address you want.

d. Now when the victim opens the above link nothing will open but his Ip address is written into the ip.html file. So open the ip.html file to get his IP address.

e. That's all this method... I hope you liked it.

2. Using Blogs and Websites

This method is for those who have their blogs or websites. Normal users can also do this as blog is free to make. Make a new blog and use any stats service like histats or any other stats widget. Just add a new widget and put histats code there and save template. And send the link of your blog to your friend and get his IP.

That's only.

3. Using Read Notify service

This is an email based service. Steps to use Read Notify service:

a. First open the Read Notify website : RCPT

b. Now register on this website and then it will send you confirmation mail. Verify your account.

c. Once your account is activated.

Do the following steps use this service:

Compose your email just like you usually would in your own email or web email program
Type: .readnotify.com on the end of your recipients email address (don't worry, that gets removed before your recipients receive the email). Like this: shiviskingg@gmail.com.readnotify.com
Send your email

Some things to remember:

don't send to and from the same computer
if your email program 'auto-completes' email addresses from your address book, you'll need to keep typing over the top of the auto-completed one to add the .readnotify.com
if you are cc-ing your email to other readers, you must add tracking to all of them

4. Sniffing Yahoo and Gmail Chat sessions

With the help of Sniffers like ethereal, wireshark etc we can sniff the Gmail, and yahoo chat sessions while we are chatiing to any our friend and extract the IP address from there. I will explain this trick in detail in my next article as its a long article in itself.

5. Bonus Method for Online Gamers

We can also get the IP address from online games like counter strike, age of empires in Game ranger etc.. Many counter strike servers use amx mode. Just view which people are connecting and whats their IP addess as plugins show the IP address of people connecting to the game server. If you have more access to counter strike server you can use status command in console. Just go to console and type "status"(without quotes) and press enter there you can see all players details his steam ID and much more depending upon server.

Now you have IP address but what you can do with an IP address.

How to hack online Sessions : Session Hijacking

2011-09-06T15:06:00.000+08:00

Hello friends, from now onwards we will explore the most advanced Hacking Techniques. One of them is Session Hijacking. In today's tutorial i will discuss How to hack the online sessions using Session Hijacking. In today's Hacking class, i will explain basics of Session Hijacking like What is session Hijacking and Different types of Session Hijacking attacks and different methods to Hijack the sessions. In my next tutorial that is tomorrow i will explain you in Detail How to Hijack the Sessions and what tools you will need to Hijack the active sessions. So friends read on...

How Session Hijacking works

What is Session Hijacking?

Let's discuss them in common term's, Session Hijacking by the name only it suggests that we are hacking someone's active session and trying to exploit it by taking the unauthorized access over their computer system or Network. So Session Hijacking is the exploitation of valid computer or network session. Sometimes technical guys also call this HTTP cookie theft or more correctly Magic Cookie Hack. Now you guys surely be thinking what is Magic Cookie.
Magic cookie is simply a cookie that is used to authenticate the user on remote server or simply computer. In general, cookies are used to maintain the sessions on the websites and store the remote address of the website. So in Session Hijacking what Hacker does is that he tries to steal the Magic cookies of the active session that's why its called HTTP cookie Theft. Nowadays several websites has started using HTTPS cookies simply called encrypted cookies. But we all know If encrypter exits so its decrypter also :P..

Session Hijacking is the process of taking over a existing active session. One of the main reason for Hijacking the session is to bypass the authentication process and gain the access to the machine. Since the session is already active so there is no need of re-authenticating and the hacker can easily access the resources and sensitive information like passwords, bank details and much more.

Different Types of Session Hijacking

Session Hijacking involves two types of attacks :
1. Active attack
2. Passive attack

In Passive attack, the hacker Hijacks a session, but just sits back and watches and records all the traffic that is being sent from the computer or received by the computer. This is useful for finding the sensitive information like username passwords of websites, windows and much more...

In Active attack, hacker finds the active session and takes over it. This is done by forcing one of the parties offline which is usually achieved by DDOS attack (Distributed Denial of service attack) . Now the hacker takes control over the active session and executes the commands on the system that either give him the sensitive information such as passwords or allow him to login at later time.
There are also some hybrid attacks, where the attacker watches a session for while and then becomes active by taking it over. Another way is to watch the session and periodically inject data into the active session without actually taking it over.

Methods to Hijack Sessions

There are four main methods used to perpetrate a session hijack. These are:

Session fixation, where the attacker sets a user's session id to one known to him, for example by sending the user an email with a link that contains a particular session id. The attacker now only has to wait until the user logs in.
Session sidejacking, where the attacker uses packet sniffing to read network traffic between two parties to steal the session cookie. Many web sites use SSL encryption for login pages to prevent attackers from seeing the password, but do not use encryption for the rest of the site once authenticated. This allows attackers that can read the network traffic to intercept all the data that is submitted to the server or web pages viewed by the client. Since this data includes the session cookie, it allows him to impersonate the victim, even if the password itself is not compromised. Unsecured Wi-Fi hotspots are particularly vulnerable, as anyone sharing the network will generally be able to read most of the web traffic between other nodes and the access point.
Alternatively, an attacker with physical access can simply attempt to steal the session key by, for example, obtaining the file or memory contents of the appropriate part of either the user's computer or the server.
Cross-site scripting, where the attacker tricks the user's computer into running code which is treated as trustworthy because it appears to belong to the server, allowing the attacker to obtain a copy of the cookie or perform other operations.

That's all for today later i will discuss in detail How to do the Session Hijacking practically.
I hope you all like this...
edmund liew

Creating a Content Management System for your ASP.NET Web Site with CKEditor

2011-09-04T11:05:00.000+08:00

This article will show you how to integrate CKEditor into an ASP.NET site to provide your users with the ability to edit their web site without them having to access the underlying HTML or source files.
The Content Management System (CMS) we will be designing in this tutorial works by storing your page HTML in a database and then using a Formview to bind the HTML to the CKeditor text control, just like using a normal text box.

Step 1: Create the Database

For this example I will be setting up a simple SQL Server database which holds the HTML content for the pages that the customer will be editing.
I've created a simple table, T_Pages which has 2 columns, one to store the page name, and the other to store the HTML.

The PageName field stores the name of the aspx file that we are editing, and the HTML field stores the raw HTML which makes up the page:

Step 2: Set up CKeditor

Go to the CKEditor download site and download the latest versions of both CKEditor 3.x and the CKEditor for ASP.NET control.. Extract the files to a directory called CKeditor in the root of your web site.
Extract CKEditor.NET.dll from the bin\Release\ folder and place it in the /bin directory in your web site.

Step 3: Create a site administration page to edit page content

Now we create a simple aspx page that contains a Formview. Make sure you secure this page so anonymous users cannot edit the page text!
At the top of the page, register the CKeditor control:

<%@ Register Assembly="CKEditor.NET" Namespace="CKEditor.NET" TagPrefix="CKEditor" %>

Now create a Formview with an EditItemTemplate which binds the CKeditor control to the HTML field in your database depending on what page is to be edited. The CKeditor control has a large number of settings (see http://docs.cksource.com/CKEditor_3.x/Developers_Guide) but the main ones that we are interested in are:

ToolbarSet - This allows you to create a custom toolbar that only shows the font manipulation controls that you want your customers to access (We will be discussing this item and customising it further below, under Step 5 - Customising FCKEditor.)
EditorAreaCSS - This allows you to specify what the text inside the FCKeditor control looks like.

The Formview will also need a Save Button which runs the update command to save changes. I also recommend a Cancel button, but have left it out of this example.
The Formview code then looks something like this:

<asp:FormView DataKeyNames="page" DataSourceID="dsSiteAdministration" 
ID="FormView1" runat="server" DefaultMode="Edit">
<EditItemTemplate>
    <CKEditor:CKEditorControl ID="CKeditor1" runat="server" 
        ToolbarSet="MyToolbarSet"
        Value='<%# Bind("html") %>' EditorAreaCSS="/css/editor.css">
    </CKEditor:CKEditorControl>
    <asp:LinkButton ID="btnSave" runat="server" CommandName="Update"
        Text="Save changes" />
</EditItemTemplate>
</asp:FormView>

You also need to create the DataSource. I use the SQLDataSource here, but recommend ObjectDataSources for production environments:

<asp:SqlDataSource ID="dsSiteAdministration" runat="server" 
ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:MyConnectionString %>" 
SelectCommand="SELECT * FROM [T_Pages] WHERE page=@page"
UpdateCommand="UPDATE [T_Pages] SET HTML=@HTML WHERE page=@page">
    <SelectParameters>
        <asp:QueryStringParameter Name="page" QueryStringField="page" Type="string" />
    </SelectParameters>
    <UpdateParameters>
        <asp:Parameter Name="html" Type="string" />
        <asp:QueryStringParameter Name="page" QueryStringField="page" Type="string" />
    </UpdateParameters>
</asp:SqlDataSource>

Our application will call the SiteAdministration.aspx page with a parameter telling it which page to retrieve from the database for editing. such as SiteAdministration.aspx?page=AboutUs.
You should put checks in your page to ensure that a valid QueryStringParameter is being passed.

Step 4: Modify your pages so they retrieve content from your database

For existing pages that you wish to allow editing on, simply create a new row in your T_Pages database table with the PageName column containing the page name, and the html column containing all the editable part of the page text, including all html content.
Then, simply modify your pages by putting in a repeater to display the HTML from your database:

<html>
<head>
<title>Title</title>
</head>
<body>
<asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="Repeater1" DataSourceID="dsPage">
    <ItemTemplate>
        <asp:Label ID="lblPage" runat="server" Text='<%# Eval("HTML") %>' />
    </ItemTemplate>
</asp:Repeater>
</body>
</html>

The Datasource simply looks at what page you specify (using the DefaultValue setting in the <Parameter> section) and retrieves the appropriate HTML:

<asp:SqlDataSource ID="dsPage" runat="server" 
ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:MyConnectionString %>" 
SelectCommand="SELECT * FROM [T_Pages] WHERE page=@page" >
    <SelectParameters>
        <asp:Parameter Name="page" Type="string" DefaultValue="AboutUs" />
    </SelectParameters>
</asp:SqlDataSource>

We will also show a link to edit the page. For production environments, you should set this link up to only appear if the user has authenticated as a site administrator. The script below removes the '.aspx' extension from the current page and then creates a hyperlink with the remainder as a query parameter to the Site Administration page.

if (HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
{
    string MyPage = Strings.LCase(Strings.Left
        (System.IO.Path.GetFileName(Request.ServerVariables("SCRIPT_NAME")), 
        Strings.InStr(System.IO.Path.GetFileName(Request.ServerVariables("SCRIPT_NAME")), ".") - 1));
    Response.Write("<a href='/admin/siteadministration.aspx?page=" + MyPage + "'>Edit this page</a>");
}

So let's recap with an example 'About Us' page called aboutus.aspx:

The SQL Database contains a record for 'aboutus' as the Page and the formatted HTML for the page in the HTML column.
Visitors to aboutus.aspx will get the formatted HTML page from the database via a Repeater control.
Site Administrators will see a 'Edit this Page' link which will go to siteadministration.aspx?page=aboutus.
Clicking on 'Edit this Page' will show the CKEditor text box populated with the HTML from the database in a WYSIWYG format.

Step 5: Customising the CKEditor Toolbar

Finally, the ToolBar can be customised to only show the text manipulation features you approve.
The default toolbar sets Full and Basic are defined as follows:
config.toolbar_Full =
[
    { name: 'document', items : [ 'Source','-','Save','NewPage','DocProps','Preview','Print','-','Templates' ] },
    { name: 'clipboard', items : [ 'Cut','Copy','Paste','PasteText','PasteFromWord','-','Undo','Redo' ] },
    { name: 'editing', items : [ 'Find','Replace','-','SelectAll','-','SpellChecker', 'Scayt' ] },
    { name: 'forms', items : [ 'Form', 'Checkbox', 'Radio', 'TextField', 'Textarea', 'Select', 'Button', 'ImageButton',   'HiddenField' ] },
    '/',
    { name: 'basicstyles', items : [ 'Bold','Italic','Underline','Strike','Subscript','Superscript','-','RemoveFormat' ] },
    { name: 'paragraph', items : [ 'NumberedList','BulletedList','-','Outdent','Indent','-','Blockquote','CreateDiv','-   ','JustifyLeft','JustifyCenter','JustifyRight','JustifyBlock','-','BidiLtr','BidiRtl' ] },
    { name: 'links', items : [ 'Link','Unlink','Anchor' ] },
    { name: 'insert', items : [ 'Image','Flash','Table','HorizontalRule','Smiley','SpecialChar','PageBreak','Iframe' ] },
    '/',
    { name: 'styles', items : [ 'Styles','Format','Font','FontSize' ] },
    { name: 'colors', items : [ 'TextColor','BGColor' ] },
    { name: 'tools', items : [ 'Maximize', 'ShowBlocks','-','About' ] }
];

config.toolbar_Basic =
[
    ['Bold', 'Italic', '-', 'NumberedList', 'BulletedList', '-', 'Link', 'Unlink','-','About']
];

To add your own toolbars, simply add a custom toolbar definition inside the config.js file, and reference your new ToolbarSet in your ASP.NET control, as discussed in Step 3.

About The Author

This article is written by bartek marnane, He blogs at www.blog.evonet.com.au/

SQL SERVER – 2008 – Configure Database Mail – Send Email From SQL Database

2011-08-28T10:13:00.000+08:00

Today I would discuss about the Database Mail which is used to send the Email using SQL Server. In order to send mail using Database Mail in SQL Server, there are 3 basic steps that need to be carried out. 1) Create Profile and Account 2) Configure Email 3) Send Email.

Step 1) Create Profile and Account:

You need to create a profile and account using the Configure Database Mail Wizard which can be accessed from the Configure Database Mail context menu of the Database Mail node in Management Node. This wizard is used to manage accounts, profiles, and Database Mail global settings which are shown below:

Step 2) Configure Email:

After the Account and the Profile are created successfully, we need to configure the Database Mail. To configure it, we need to enable the Database Mail XPs parameter through the sp_configure stored procedure, as shown here:

sp_CONFIGURE 'show advanced', 1

GO

RECONFIGURE

GO

sp_CONFIGURE 'Database Mail XPs', 1

GO

RECONFIGURE

GO

Step 3) Send Email:

After all configurations are done, we are now ready to send an email. To send mail, we need to execute a stored procedure sp_send_dbmail and provide the required parameters as shown below:

USE msdb

GO

EXEC sp_send_dbmail @profile_name='PinalProfile',

@recipients='test@Example.com',

@subject='Test message',

@body='This is the body of the test message.

Congrates Database Mail Received By you Successfully.'

After all validations of the parameters entered are done, certain stored procedures are executed and the mail is queued by Service Broker, read more at SQL SERVER – Introduction to Service Broker.

Database Mail keeps copies of outgoing e-mail messages and displays them in the sysmail_allitems, sysmail_sentitems, sysmail_unsentitems, sysmail_faileditems . The status of the mail sent can be seen in sysmail_mailitems table, when the mail is sent successfully the sent_status field of the sysmail_mailitems table is set to 1 which can again be seen in sysmail_sentitems table. The mails that are failed will have the sent_status field value to 2 and those are unsent will have value 3.
The log can be checked in sysmail_log table as shown below:

SELECT *

FROM sysmail_mailitems

GO

SELECT *

FROM sysmail_log

GO

Status can be verified using sysmail_sentitems table.

After sending mail you can check the mail received in your inbox

Hacking with Nmap and Metasploit

2011-06-18T22:39:00.000+08:00

Today I am writing a tutorial on hacking with Nmap with Metasploit.

First d/l Metasploit 3.3 from the official website,Link:

http://www.metasploit.com/

Let all that install, and towards the end of the installation it will ask if you would like Nmap installed also, choose yes. Once you have that installed the Metasploit screen will open up as shown below...

Now type db_create

Once you have typed that type nmap

This loads nmap, as shown below....

You need to configure your scan now, I usually do a simple -sT -sV scan which will tell us the open ports and services running on the victims computer, Now type nmap -sT -sV xxx.xxx.xxx.x (X's being victims Ip number), Demonstrated below.

Now give it 5 minutes to complete the scan,Once that is complete if your lucky you should get a response like this...

This is basically a list of the open ports and services running on the target machine, Now the handy feature of the metasploit 3.3 framework is the autopwn feature, this basically searches and runs all matching exploits in the Metasploit database against the target machine and if successful will create a shell or similar privilege for the attacker.

Now once you have the nmap results delivered back to you showing the open ports and services type db_autopwn -p -t -e , From this point you will either have access to the victims computer through a successfully launched exploit or you will get a response saying the machine wasn't vulnerable to any of the exploits in the Metasploit database. Unfortunately on this particular machine I found it wasn't vulnerable as the image below proves.Good luck.

Surfing Internet anonymously using TOR (it is the Same software used by famous WIKILEAKS website)

2011-06-17T17:54:00.000+08:00

As far reading my other articles about anonymous surfing you have got to know that a proxy can hide your IP but it cannot be trusted because it may give away your identity if needed. But there Exist a away by which you can Surf Internet any No one can trace you even CIA , FBI or M15 cannot trace you. A example of it is WIKILEAK which use the the same software that I am going to tell you.

The Software’s name is TOR (THE ONION ROUTING) and it can be downloaded from (http://www.ziddu.com/download/12331095/vidalia-bundle-0.2.1.26-0.2.10-1.exe.html) for free.
Note: You need to install a Mozilla firefox add on which is included in package you have downloaded to use Tor.

Now follow the following Steps

1) Download the TOR and run it.
2) Open the 'Vidalia Control Panel' from the task bar and Click on 'Start Tor'.
3) Now open Mozilla Firefox browser, single click on red highlighted 'Tor Disabled' on right corner of browser and it will turn to green highlighted 'Tor Enabled'.

The Difference Between a DoS and a DDoS Attack

2011-06-16T20:00:00.000+08:00

What is the difference between the two?

Whilst DoS and DDoS sound remarkably similar there are in fact differences between the two -

DoS

A DoS Attack is a Denial of Service attack.

This means that one computer and one internet connection is used to flood a server with packets (TCP / UDP).

The point of such a denial of service attack is to overload the targeted server’s bandwidth and other resources.

This will make the server inaccessible to others, thereby blocking the website or whatever else is hosted there.

DDoS

A DDoS Attack is a Distributed Denial of Service Attack.

In most respects it is similar to a DoS attack but the results are much, much different.

Instead of one computer and one internet connection the DDoS attack utilises many computers and many connections.

The computers behind such an attack are often distributed around the whole world and will be part of what is known as a botnet.

The main difference between a DDoS attack vs a DoS attack, therefore, is that the target server will be overload by hundreds or even thousands of requests in the case of the former as opposed to just one attacker in the case of the latter.

Therefore it is much, much harder for a server to withstand a DDoS attack as opposed to the simpler DoS incursion.

Edmund Liew

Fix: This Nvidia Graphics Driver Is Not Compatiable with This Version of Windows

Why your NVidia driver is not compatible with your version of Windows

Method 1: Uninstall your graphics drivers with DDU and manually download your NVidia drivers for your OS.

Method 2: Update or upgrade your version of Windows.

Method 3: Use GeForce Experience to download your NVidia driver

How to build your own computer

Tools

And now the fun-part:

Building your own El Cheapo Rocket

Mainboard, CPU and upgrade cards

Memory:

Putting the box together.....

Switching on.....

How to Install Android on Your PC

It’s a Simple Process

Step 1: Grab an Android ROM

Step 2: Going Virtual

Step 3: Create a Virtual Machine

Step 4: Install Android

Step 5: Almost There!

Send WhatsApp messages via PHP using WhatsAPI

1. Get your WhatsApp password

2. Get WhatsAPI and send/receive messages

2.1. Download WhatsAPI and test scripts

2.2. Send WhatsApp messages

2.3. Receive WhatsApp messages

HACK- Candy Crush Saga v1.xx.0 (Multi Mods) – Android

Android Location Based Services Application – GPS location

Android Hello World Example – How to develop android apps

1. Download and Install the Android SDK

2. Download and Install the ADT Eclipse plugin

3. Create an Android Virtual Device (AVD)

4. Create an Android Project with Eclipse

5. Run the Application in the Android Virtual Device

Download Eclipse Project

How to install Windows XP on DV9500, DV6500 and DV2500 above model notebooks without using USB floppy drive.

Samsung mobile tips, tricks& secrets

Upgrade Samsung Galaxy S2 to official Android 4.0.3 XXLPQ firmware manually

Caution

Requirements

Update Instructions

Hacking Software - oclHashcat-plus v0.08

About The Author This article is written by Shikhil Sharma, He blogs at www.hacking-tweaks.blogspot.com/.

Why is my Task Manager disabled, and how do I fix it?

28 Ways to Make Money with Your Website

Direct Methods

Indirect Methods

Installing WordPress on SQL Server

1. Install the Prerequisites

Get Products with Web Platform Installer

2. Configure a Database

3. Download the WordPress on SQL Server Distribution

4. Configure IIS

Enable IIS Detailed Error Messages

Grant IIS Write Permissions to WordPress Folder

5. Install WordPress on SQL Server

6. Remove IIS Detailed Errors and Configure URL Rewrite

iPad Programming Tutorial – Hello World++

Introduction

What We Will Be Creating

Getting Started

Creating The Project

Importing The Project Images

Displaying The List Of Fruits

Displaying The Fruits

Another Cool Feature Of SplitViewController

HowTo: Configure WordPress To Use A Content Delivery Network (CDN)

What Is A CDN?

What Are The Advantages Of Using CDN Over Central Server?

Different Types Of CDNs

Content Delivery Service Providers

Our Sample Setup

Step # 1: Purchase CDN Service

Step # 2: Update Your DNS Server

Step # 3: Configure Origin Pull Web Server

Step # 4: Configure WordPress To Upload Files To CDN Server

Step # 5: Configure WordPress Theme To Serve CSS / JS From The CDN Server

Results

How Do I Test Images And Other Media Files Are Cached Or Not By CDN?

About The Author

This article is written by Shikhil Sharma, He blogs at www.hacking-tweaks.blogspot.com/.