Online Expeditions

2008-04-18T12:14:00.000+05:30

A Cross Platform Blogging Tool from Six Apart

Bloggers racking their brains trying to make sure their regular updates reach all near and dear ones now have an option to stick to just one Web site to use multiple blogging services. Six Apart, which is known for its blogging tools like ’Movable Type’ and ’TypePad’ has come up with "Blog It" -- a new Facebook application that allows users to post to various blogs or micro-blogs from within Facebook, thus deleting the fine line between blogging and social networking.

Powered by TypePad, "Blog It" brings social tools to bloggers all over the Web no matter what publishing platform they use. Unlike existing Facebook blogging tools, the new tool is not limited to any one blogging service; it works with nearly a dozen services including Blogger, TypePad, Twitter, Movable Type, Vox, and WordPress. In fact, contrary to the existing norm wherein Facebook users would import data and information from across the Web, "Blog It" enables them to export content from Facebook. As a result, users do not need to sit and update each blog separately; they can now do it all in one go from within Facebook.

In addition, "Blog It" allows users to notify friends and colleagues around the Web of new posts. When writing a post, a blogger can choose to automatically share it via Twitter and Pownce, in addition to the Facebook Newsfeed. To get started, simply add the Blog It application (http://blogit.typepad.com/) to Facebook and set up your account details, and hey presto! you can start creating posts, adding them to blogs, and sharing with friends.

2008-04-18T12:03:00.000+05:30

USB Drives that can be Personalized

Memorex, a portfolio brand of Imation, today announced availability of its rugged "Ultra TravelDrive" USB hard drives in the country. The USP of these drives is their ability to be personalized with interchangeable, nature-inspired color faceplates.

The "Ultra TravelDrive" USB hard drives are claimed to be high on ergonomic quotient; they sport a double-injected black rubberized grip area to ensure not slipping out of your hand or pocket or bag. While the drives have a sleek charcoal metallic finish, each of them ships with two interchangeable face plates that let you customize them. The 120GB drives ship with Ocean Blue and Onyx Black faceplates while the 160GB drives with Sagebrush Green and Arctic White glossy faceplates.

When these drives are plugged into any computer’s USB port, they emanate a cool blue LED light that flashes during data transfer. An additional tiny LED light even indicates whether the drives are transferring data at USB 1.1 or USB 2.0 speeds. The drives come with backup and synchronization software as well as a USB cable. They are compatible with virtually any desktop or laptop, whether a Mac or PC. The only power source required by these drives is a USB connection; they don’t need an additional power supply.

The new drives are available through authorized Imation distributors at prices of Rs 5,500 (120GB) and Rs 7,000 (160GB), along with a three-year warranty.

Asus Eee PC Now in India After a long wait, the Asus Eee PC has

2008-04-18T11:57:00.000+05:30

Asus Eee PC Now in India

After a long wait, the Asus Eee PC has finally made it to the Indian market with a price tag of Rs 18,000.

Targeted at user segments like school children, housewives, senior citizens, and teenagers who enjoy simple computing with lightweight gadgets, the 7-inch Eee PC -- weighing even less than 1 kg -- was launched at an event in Mumbai today.

According to Francis Kao, product manager (Notebooks) for Asus India, "The worldwide acceptance of this product is symbolic of its simplicity, robust build quality, and user-friendliness. Although it is primarily aimed at school children and teenagers, even other user groups have shown a lot of interest in the product."

The Eee PC promises the most comprehensive Internet application based on three Es: Easy to learn, work, and play; Excellent Internet experience, and Excellent mobile computing experience.

On the occasion of the launch, Albert Tung, managing director of Asus India, said, "The Asus Eee PC aims at enriching human life like all our other technology offerings. With growing computing demands as well as growing number of users, both young and old, the Eee PC provides users with a new mobile Internet experience like never before."

Based on the Intel CPU and chipset, the Eee PC offers two modes of intuitive user interface for both experienced and inexperienced PC users, and packs over 40 built-in applications. The other specifications include built-in flash-memory, 512MB DDR2 memory, 300K pixels video camera, and WLAN.

However, what is missing from the machine is an optical drive, the reason given being light weight and ultra-compact form factor. Leaving out on the optical drive seems to be the mantra for making slim and light weight notebooks. The very recently launched ’Mac Air’ has also missed out on the same, and apparently for the same reasons.

Initially, the Eee PC 4 GB model running on the Linux operating system has been launched only in Mumbai, and will be made available in other cities in March. In addition, Asus is also working on a Windows version of the Eee PC.

The Eee PC will be available starting February 2 evening at Croma stores in Juhu and Malad, as well as at e-zone. It will come in two colors -- Galaxy Black and Pearl White.

Interestingly, HCL just recently launched its MiLeap X series ultra-portable laptops featuring nearly the same technical specifications as the Asus Eee PC. There are very few differences, one of them being storage capacity; the Asus Eee PC has a 4GB internal flash memory while the HCL leaptop has a 2 GB internal flash memory and no Web cam. Minus these two features, the HCL laptop is available for Rs 14,000.

Online Storage Mgmt Tools

2008-04-17T16:08:00.001+05:30

Online
Storage Mgmt Tools

Online storage has been widely accepted as a disaster-resistant solution.
Here, is a discussion of some of the best online storage sites and utilities to
help you manage your data

Apart of the total IT budget of an organization is
reserved for data storage and management; and using this budget effectively is
one of the challenging tasks. There are several innovations in the recent past
which have made data management simpler and also disaster-resistant. One such
innovation is online storage management sites and tools. Online storage as the
name suggests stores data online, thus making it reachable anytime, anywhere. By
using online storage not only can you store data but also share and manage it.
There are a number of sites which offer online storage space, and there are a
few which even offer advanced features such as Content management.

Here, we will be disscussing such sites and tools. Most sites provide free
sign up and a fixed amount of storage space, which could be extended by paying.

By simultaneously using these websites one can store large amount of data
free of cost.

1800edrive
This site provides its users with 25 GB of storage space
and once configured, you can use it like a logical drive, which you create on
your network or you can simply access the website and store as well as read your
data there. Once you have configured 1800edrive as a logical drive, you can
simply drag and drop data to it. The 1800edrive provides encrypted data transfer
and works transparently with Windows browser. Not only does this site provide
online storage space, but it also lets its users manage that space. On top of
that it let you create content in different formats like html, xml, txt and
more.

Configuring 1800edrive onto your desktop is quite simple; just go to the
website and sign up using your email address. After filling up a few personal
details you will receive an email confirmation providing a link to activate your
account. Once your account gets activated, you can use all the features
including network drive creation.

MediaMax
This provides an online storage space of 25 GB, and is
powered by Streamloader. It provides its users with a secure place to store,
access and share personal content. The content could be anything ranging from
movies, videos to photographs.

Interestingly, even those who don’t have a MediaMax account can upload large
files to MediaMax, but they can’t host their content on the sites which
authorized users can.

For free backup and synchronization of their content one can download
MediaMax XL beta software, and then further by using the MediaMax file manager,
you can organize, download, play, share or host your files.

Xdrive
With this online storage site one can store and share 5 GB
of content. Signing up is easy; all you need is an AOL account. One can use
Xdrive as Xdrive Classic, Xdrive Desktop Lite and Xdrive desktop. Xdrive classic
provides a Web interface to manage your account. The Xdrive Desktop Lite is a
light weight desktop application for managing content. Xdrive Desktop can be
used for backup, drag and drop and content management onto your computer.

The interface provided by Xdrive is the most appealing amongst all five that
we have discussed here.

4share
4share provides users with a free storage space of 5 GB.
Just provide your email address and you immediately get a free account. The key
feature of this site is Windows-based interface which is simple to use, and
there is even anti-virus support and password protection for folders.

Diino
This online storage site provides 2 GB of free storage space.
Diino doesn’t have a browser- based Web interface; so for using this application
first you have to download it onto your computer. The interface of this
application has a Diino player integrated in it, and email management, blog
facility and backup features are also there.

One can even access Diino through a mobile phone. It provides a lot of
flexibility to the user. With Diino, apart from the free plan there are paid
plans that you can choose from as per your needs.

Storage Management Tools
With about 120 percent increase in
capacity of disks annually and drop in per megabyte storage costs the obvious
costs of managing storage should have declined, but in reality most
organizations are spending more on storage devices every year. The reason is the
ever increasing data and lack of proper management tools. After discussing the
free online storage sites, now we will throw some light on a few storage
management tools which will help organizations to cope with the challenges of
storage management.

Brocade SAN Health Diagnostics Capture
Managing a SAN is one of the
greatest challenges faced by organizations. Brocade SAN Health Diagnostic
Capture is a free utility that can be used to monitor the SAN’s health. This
utility can be downloaded from www.brocade.com/support/sanhealthdownload.jspX

Key features
This tool will automatically discover, analyze and
report important aspects of your SAN including switch topology and performance
details. The results are presented in standard Excel and Visio format.

Installation
The basic system requirements for installing this
utility onto your desktop includes: Intel Pentium processor 133 MHz or higher,
Microsoft Windows 95 or higher, and 64 MB RAM / 10 MB available hard disk
space.

Download this utility from the above mentioned URL, open the zipped file and
then run InstallSANHealthDiagnosticsCapture.exe. This will install the
application on your system. The basic configuration steps of the tool are
mentioned in the screen shots 1-6.

There is one more tool known as SAN Health Professional provided by Brocade
which is available free of cost and can be used for analyzing SAN data captured
by the SAN Health Diagnostics Capture tool.

SAN Health Professional
One can download this utility from
www.brocade.com/support/sanhealth prodownload.jsp. This application is used for
analyzing complete data captured by capture tool and is important in change
management.

Installation
The basic system requirements for installing this
utility remains the same as above, with the only exception that it works only on
Microsoft Windows 2000 or higher versions. Refer to figure 6 to know how to use
this.

Storage Assessment Tool
One major challenge in the storage
management is the unused data residing over the storage space. As price
associated with storage hardware is high and lots of resources are wasted in
managing unused data, overcoming this issue is critical for any
organization.

Storage Assessment Tool is a free and easy to use software to accumulate and
report storage metrics of servers thus providing a report that can be used in
storage management. This tool from Quest software can be downloaded from www.quest.com/Storage-Assessment-Tool/,
and can be used for free for 60 days.

Key features
This tool is easy to install and run. It provides
various kinds of reports that can be used in load balancing exercises, handling
server lease expirations and deployment of new storage devices on network. With
the help of this tool one can easily reduce physical server count.

One of the key feature of this tool is the identification of files which are
taking up disk space i.e. .avi, .mpeg, and then these files can be easily
removed

Using it, one can scan up to 50 unique computers on the network and get an
idea about money which could be saved if disks are cleaned up. Several reports
which one can get using this includes Enterprise Storage statistics Reports,
Enterprise Storage Recovery Reports, Potential Conflicts Reports and Data
Migration Challenge Reports. The Enterprise Storage Recovery reports give an
idea about the storage space that can be saved if all unused and duplicate data
is removed.

Blogged with Flock

2008-03-31T18:12:00.000+05:30

MEMORY: Essential for SYSTEM..............

We all know its significance, but do we all know it’s dirt cheap now? Go on, your PC could always use more..................................................

Memory is the most-often upgraded part of any PC. The reason is usually that a huge increment in performance can be gained by just upgrading memory rather than changing a Processor or swapping a hard drive. This is because memory is the expressway via which your processor talks to your graphics solution and Northbridge-since there’s huge amount of data that flows back and forth from these processing centres (both CPU and GPU), your memory had better be up to the task. If you visualise memory as an expressway then it’s easy to understand the concepts of its speed (i.e. frequency) and the amount of it (megabytes, gigabytes etc). In short the faster the memory the better, but what really gives a significant boost to performance is more memory.

Just upgrade from 512 MB to 1 GB under Windows XP and you’ll notice the difference.

There has always been a sweet spot for the amount of memory needed. It used to be 512 MB a couple of years ago. These days multimedia being the memory hog, it is 2 GB. Some games and video rendering / editing work will even scale up in performance at 3 and 4 gigabytes of memory. Does this sound a costly proposition? At Rs 2,600 for 2 GB, memory is no longer a wallet-busting proposition. We feel the prices of DDR2 Memory fill fall further. It’s easy to get carried away and buy 4 GB of memory but we caution you that Windows XP 32-bit for example will not use more than 3.2 GB of memory, so if you must have more memory go 64-bit for your OS, else stick with 3 GB.

Talking DDR2, it’s mainly available in two flavours-667 MHz and 800 MHz (clock speeds). The difference in performance in memory-hungry applications will justify the premium the faster memory commands. DDR is officially out of production and supply-and will be costly due to dwindling supplies. DDR3 promises to become the new standard in another year or so, and scales above DDR2 in terms of speed-we’ve 1333 MHz DDR3 samples, with up to 1800 MHz being promised soon. The only issue with DDR3 right now is the relatively higher latencies which detract from performance-clock per clock, DDR2 is still faster.

All About Timing!
Will all DDR2 800 MHz memory be equally fast? No. Will 1066 MHz memory necessarily be faster than 800 MHz memory? No again. It all depends on the latency of the memory. Latency, as you know, is defined as wasted clock cycles, and memory latencies read something like 4-4-4-12 at a particular frequency. Latency and clock speeds are directly proportional. Of course, higher latencies are slower, so the relationship is inversely proportional.

Is All Memory Created Equal?
The sad fact is that most vendors do not know much about memory (other than the density of the stick, and the brand). Even Memory Chips have premium brands and lower brands-this is aside from the brand. In fact the big memory chip manufacturers are Micron, Samsung, Infineon, Quimonda, Hyundai, and Kingston-most of these brands don’t actually market memory, and aside from the latter two, they’re solely OEM players. But keep in mind that there are differences in performance, overclocking capabilities, and stability between different chips of memory even if their clock speeds and timings are the same.

Agent Tips

Don’t buy unbranded or locally-branded memory. It’s a very stressed-out component in your PC, and the number one cause of freeze-ups and restarts. Invest wisely-a few hundred bucks more for peace of mind is worth it.

Hoard Up Or Wait?
INTEL has announced support for DDR3 as a memory platform due to the increased bandwidth it provides (eventually, DDR3 will scale up to 2 GHz). However DDR2 is as strong as ever, with prices at an all time low. We expect DDR3 to become mainstream in late 2008. For one, the astronomical prices, and secondly, there aren’t any significant performance gains as yet. We say upgrade to 2 GB of DDR2 memory to ensure your PC runs everything properly, but don’t spend more than 5,000 bucks on memory right now. We estimate DDR3 will become really affordable by early 2009.

What Makes The Best Buy In Terms Of Speed And Quantity?
In terms of speed, DDR2 800 MHz hits the sweet spot between price and performance. Priced at around 600 bucks more for a 2 GB kit, DDR2 800 is a more viable option than the older DDR2 667. Look for latencies of 3-4-4-8 for 667 MHz memory, and 4-4-4-12 for 800 MHz memory. Just make sure to buy a kit, or to buy your 2 GB together (same brand and speed) so that you can use them in dual-channel mode-which makes a difference of 5-12 percent depending on the Application

2008-03-31T17:59:00.000+05:30

Desktop Gaming

The PC has been evolving so fast that more often than not, you’re likely to find that what you bought has become obsolete within just a few months of purchase. Newer technologies emerge every other month, and upgrading costs just as much as buying a new PC… but you need to take the plunge some time, so just decide on what you need and get something close to that!

What You Should Be Looking At
Upgradeability: There should be upgradeability options for RAM, CPU, graphics card and hard drive. It is therefore advisable to opt for the latest CPU socket type available and also the latest RAM type, so you aren’t left in the lurch when you decide to upgrade. Also check if there is a sufficient number of PCI slots to add PCI cards (such as a TV-Tuner). Don’t forget to look at the comparison tests for motherboards and CPUs in our November issue for more information about things such as memory support.

HTPC features: If you want an HTPC, make sure it comes with the complete set of accessories, such as a wireless remote control and wireless mouse and keyboard. Newer ports such as HDMI are a big plus, especially if you happen to have an LCD TV that supports such those interfaces. If you really want to future-proof your HTPC, you should choose a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray drive (or better still, a hybrid) as your optical drive as this is bound to be the future of multimedia standards. A TV-Tuner with FM-Radio and possibly capable of receiving digital signals will be another plus.

Features needed for video editing: Video editing professionals should opt for a larger hard drive to be able to store raw video data and still have enough space to work on it. The PC should also have a FireWire port—this is the port most often used for transferring digital video data: IEEE 1394b should be what you should look for—this has a bandwidth of 800 Mbps, twice as much as that of the older IEEE 1394a.

Analyse Your Usage
Entry-level usage: Your PC should suit your needs. It just doesn’t make sense to buy a high-end processor and graphics card, oodles of RAM, and a TB hard drive if you will only be using the PC to run accounting software. An entry level PC could do well even with a 2.0 GHz processor or equivalent with 512 MB of RAM and a 160 GB hard disk, and the OS could be XP instead of the heavier Vista.

Graphics artists and gamers: If your work requires you to use 3D rendering software, or if gaming is the primary reason for your buying a PC, get yourself one with cutting-edge components such as a high-end graphics card, a quad-core processor, at least 2 GB of RAM, and at least a 320 GB hard drive.

Designers: LCDs (especially the lower-priced models) are still not good enough for designers, so it is advisable to go with a CRT monitor. LCD monitors with MVA panels can be a replacement for the CRT, but they are currently very expensive.

As an entertainment PC: If watching movies is typical of your use for the PC, your desktop should have a graphics card that supports hardware acceleration for HD content, such as the newer HD series from ATI and the 8600 series from NVIDIA. A dual-core CPU would complement the graphics card, though it is not essential. Widescreen LCD monitors with MVA panels can render in 24-bit colour and are a better choice if you really want to enjoy the movie, but they are expensive. Also try to get a graphics and LCD monitor with a digital port such as DVI or HDMI.

Don’t Forget…
Hidden costs: Some PC dealers specify the price of a PC without mentioning taxes and installation charges. Ask for the total end-user cost.

Agent’s Tip

PCI Express 2.0 has started making an appearance in the market, so to save the hassle of upgrading later, it is better to go with this new standard now; newer peripherals such as PCIe 2.0 graphics cards are already available and offer double the bandwidth of PCIe 1.0.

The preinstalled OS: Some PC configurations do not come with any OS installed, or if there is an OS, it is a free OS (such as Linux). Most applications are written and available for Windows, so make sure it is included (ask for Windows Vista Home Premium at the very least); a later purchase will mean an additional investment.

Innovations
Spearheaded by AMD, the new DTX form factor for PCs has motherboards with dimensions 203 x 244 mm, while there is a smaller variant, Mini-DTX, with motherboard dimensions of 203 x 170 mm. The benefits of DTX are the lower cost of manufacture of the motherboard, and the smaller size. This will be adapted mainly by the HTPC industry, because the upgrade options in such a small form factor are too limited.

2008-03-26T09:29:00.000+05:30

Create your Private Network

2007-12-30T11:38:00.000+05:30

Create your Private Network on Internet

Did you know that you can create your own, private and secured network over the Internet? Your private network can have its own members, password, applications, you decide who joins it and not only that, it’s free.

We are talking about an application called Hamachi which is in fact a Virtual Private Networking application enabling you to create your own private network over the Internet.

Before we get to know how it works, let’s see its features:

Ability to run almost any application in your private network on Internet that you run on your local network at home or office. Examples of such applications are VNC, File Sharing, Intranet Messenger, Web Servers or even Gaming.

Industry standard encryption algorithms to secure over private network. Once a network is created, the communication remains private amongst the members of the network only.

The private network can be created any time you need it.

Very small in size, less than 1MB for Windows.

How does Hamachi work?

You will have to download Hamachi software that will run on your systems. This software, when run for the first time, will connect to Hamachi servers to obtain an identity and from next time onwards it registers itself on the Hamachi network. After which it becomes easy for anyone to find and join your network. Your friends can simply key in the password and join your private network.

[Website of Hamachi] » [Download Hamachi]

Gmail Demystified!!

2007-12-30T11:35:00.000+05:30

How to Upload and Store Files in your GMAIL account

There is a nice hack out there which you can use on your GMail account to store files [such as mp3, power point, PDFs, ZIP etc]. The only limitation is that you can not upload a file larger than 10Megs in size and also that you will not see a classic windows explorer kind of interface for the uploaded files inside GMail since all the files that you upload are stored as email attachments. However, after installing a shell extension in your system, you can access all the uploaded files in the same way you access file and folders in other system drives [such as a USB drive].

Sounds interesting? Let’s first begin with the installation.

Step# 1 - Download and install the GMail Drive Shell Extension from [Softpedia] or check the [Author’s site] for more download locations. You may have to restart your system for the changes to take effect.

Step# 2 - After reboot, double click “My Computer“, and check to see if ‘GMail Drive‘ shows up. If you see the drive, it means that your installation was successful. If not, please re-install the shell extension and reboot the system.

Step# 3 - To login and start uploading files to your GMail account, double click on ‘GMail Drive’ in ‘My Computer’ and login to your GMail account. [On a shared computer do not set auto-login]. You can right click and select ‘Login As’ to login as a different User.

Step# 4 - Post login, you will see an empty drive. To create a new folder, right click and select New->Folder. Double click on the folder and then either create a subfolder or just ‘Copy-Paste’ or ‘Drag & Drop’ a file into it. That’s it! You have discovered a new way of using GMail, to store your files. That’s why I love GMail.

Please note that, an uploaded file/folder has a prefix of GMAILFS when you see them in GMail. I recommend that you create a label called ‘MyFiles’ and label all such emails [uploaded files in fact] so that you do not confuse them with other emails.

To check the current usage of your GMail drive, right click on the driver letter and select properties.

Now that you know how to use your 2GB of storage in GMail to store your important files, go ahead and upload all those important certificates, mp3s, spredsheets, documents, PDFs etc.

Happy Uploading!

2007-12-30T11:26:00.000+05:30

How to Find Paid and Free WiFi Hotspots on Internet

Keeping in touch with Internet to check your emails and other important stuff is now easy when you are out on vacation in over 100 countries.

There are over 130,000 free and paid WiFi hotspots available in over 130 countries. Most of these hotspots are free and can get you connected right away without any hasseles. Two most comprehensive WiFi hotspot directories that provide information about free and paid WiFi hotspots around the world have over 144,000 hotspots in their databases.

With [jiwire] you can find and map to a WiFi hotspot from an available list of 130,309 hotspots. Another directory @ [wifinder] offers information about 14,407 hotspots around the world. You can even add your own hotspot to these directories.

JiWire helps you locate free and paid WiFi hotspot networks, secure your wireless Internet connections, and learn how to use Wi-Fi products and wireless broadband services.

Don’t forget to disable automatic connection settings in windows and also before you go out on a long holiday, ensure that your personal firewall, anti-virus software, anti spyware and anti adware softwares are upto date.

2007-12-22T13:31:00.000+05:30

Advice to Surf the Web Anonymously

So, let’s talk privacy, and then let’s talk about how you haven’t got any. That’s right, if you are surfing the Internet, and you aren’t doing it through some third party proxy server, the sites you surf to can potentially learn everything about you-your habits, your likes and dislikes, your buying preferences and more.

In this way, advertisers can serve up those annoying pop-up ads, spyware can quietly download to your computer in the background and track your every move, government agencies can watch you, and hackers can slither into your hard drive and steal your world.

Paranoid yet?

If you aren’t, re-read the the opening to this article slowly. While you are reading it, remember an advertiser’s spyware could be phoning in your private information for future use as you read.

What is anonymous surfing? Remember the old punchline, "On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog?" Well, if you practice Anonymous Web Surfing 101, nobody will know whether you’re Fido, the family pet out looking for the latest craze in dog food or the parakeet looking for warmer climes.

But seriously folks, put simply, anonymous web surfing erases any trace or trail of where you’ve been or going on the Internet.

Your private world remains private and no one, not even your Internet Service Provider (that’s the guy you pay $20 to $40 dollars a month to get on the Net) won’t have a clue about who you are. This is how it used to be, and this is how it should be. Period. End of story.

Beyond simple paranoia, people have various reasons to surf anonymously ranging from general terror about losing their privacy to wanting to keep their personal surfing sites that they go to on the job away from the prying eyes of their employers.

Beyond the obvious, what are spy websites looking for, and how do they accomplish it. Websites use a variety of methods to gather intel from the most basic which is your IP address to placing cookies on your website.

Your IP address is where you started from, like your home street address. Cookies are little bits of information placed on your computer that keeps track of your habits.

One of the easiest cookies is kept by Internet Explorer, when you visit and log in to a website, IE will ask you if you want it to remember your username and password. If you say yes, it will download a small file with that information to your hard drive. Forever more, or until you clear your cookies in IE, whenever you visit that site, it will automatically fill in your log in information.

Neat, huh? Well that’s okay. But what about the cookies that are downloaded that you don’t know about. That’s where the grey area of invasion of privacy comes in. That’s also where anonymous web surfing stops it dead in its tracks.

Sites use a variety of techniques to gather and collate this information, but the two most basic are examining your IP address and placing cookies on your PC. Matching your IP address with your cookies makes it easier for them to create personal profiles. If you’d like to see what kind of information sites can gather about you, head to these two sites, which peer into your browser and report what they find.

Analyze.Privacy.net gives a comprehensive report plus an introduction to privacy.net which shows you more about cookies, gives you a look at what others see when they look at your computer and more.

Browse Spy goes even deeper into your system and gives an eye-opening report on what’s on your system right down to the software you own.

Now that you know why you should surf anonymously and how easy it is for others to violate your privacy, how do you stop it? It’s actually easier than you might think.

There are a couple software packages out there for anonymous surfing. I personally like Tor and Vidalia. It runs in the background through my Firefox settings, and while it slows down my surfing a little, The Tor/Vidalia combination is a bit tricky to set up so if you don’t need heavy-duty protection, you might want to select one of the packages listed below. Either way, I no longer have to wonder who’s virtually following me around taking notes.

Like most anonymizers, it sends my information through a special series of computers called proxy servers which screen me from the websites I’m contacting.

My computer contacts a proxy server instead of the website directly. The website, in turn, doesn’t see me, it sees the proxy server’s IP address and proxy servers are like the aircraft carriers of the net.

They have so much armament to block cookies, popups and other web parasites that they don’t get infected or pass anything on to their clients.

Other programs that facilitate anonymous surfing include Guardster, SnoopBlocker, Mega Proxy and Anonymizer. My second favorite, anonymizer, is one of the four I just listed. Anonymizer is recognized as the leader of the pack and is relatively simple to use.

It’s where I started before I got involved with servers and such, and is really good for web surfing protection.

Last, if you are at work and can’t load a bunch of stuff to your workstation, simply surf to http://www.the-cloak.com/anonymous-surfing-home.html. It’s web based, easy and with nothing to download, a real godsend. Give them a donation and you can log in and surf to your heart’s content.

It’s not the prettiest site to look at, but it is functional and it hasn’t yet failed me for fast cloaking.

It’s done by having a special computer -- called a proxy server -- screening you from the websites you are contacting. Your computer contacts only the proxy server, which contacts the website for you.

The website, in turn, sees only your proxy server and not you. In addition to hiding your IP address, a proxy server will usually block cookies, pop-ups and other annoying web parasites.

With some systems you have to go to an anonymous service website and access your favorite website from there. With others, you download and install software which finds an anonymous server for you.

There are numerous services and programs that facilitate anonymous surfing such as Guardster, SnoopBlocker and Mega Proxy, but Anonymizer is the pioneer and recognized leader of the pack.

DIsaster Proof!!

2007-12-17T21:24:00.000+05:30

One day everything’s fine and dandy; the next, poof! Bye-bye data…Ten or 12 years ago, when I got my first taste of Windows 95 and Windows 98, using a computer was a privilege.

Today, it’s almost a right. The way I use a computer has changed as well. What was once a tool to work on Excel files and send official e-mails to the four people I knew who had e-mail addresses is now like a life-support system I cannot live without. I have about 10 GB of e-mail in Outlook, everything I’ve ever written for Digit, over 40 GB of MP3s (no, they’re not pirated, I own the CDs), and hundreds of GBs of movies ripped from my DVDs. Apart from this, there’s pictures of every vacation I’ve ever taken, some funny things I found online, and an entire 120 GB hard drive dedicated to software I like—freeware and shareware. The software is, obviously, expendable, and is the first thing I start getting rid of when I need space, but everything else is irreplaceable!

Now this is my home computer. My office computer has a lot less personal data, but a lot of important documents, e-mails, spreadsheets, and such.

Recently, two people in the Digit team had hard drives die, and lost a lot of personal data. Of more urgent concern was the fact that they lost work they had just completed, and had to begin from scratch. Now they’re busy trying to recover data from their lifeless disks. Whether or not the data is worth the Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000 that data recovery experts will charge to “attempt” to recover the disks’ contents is something each one of us decides only after facing the dilemma. But why do we?

Just yesterday, I got a call from a damsel in distress. Her laptop just stopped working, and now gives her the weird error message “Operating System not found.” It’s a branded laptop, and still under warranty, so getting another hard drive and a fresh install of the OS is free. Recovering 10 years of memories, which she had stored on the disk in the form of digital pictures? Rs 15,000, and they’ll recover what they can. I can’t even help her, because if I open up the laptop to remove the drive, the warranty becomes void. What do you do in a situation like this?

Absolutely Nothing!
You take the news like an adult, remain calm and stoic, and move on. You still have that horrible feeling—the kind that feels like someone just ripped out your intestines—but hey, when technology goes wrong, it does so horribly. Life goes on.

What you can do, however, is learn from the mistakes of others, and try and safeguard yourself from ever having to be in this situation. My mind is a lot more at ease now because I’ve taken a few steps to prevent such disasters. If you have data that’s really important to you, you should seriously consider following in my footsteps.

RAID
You’ve heard it a million times, everyone has heard about RAID, but how many of us have found out enough to actually use it?
RAID, or Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, can either be used to improve performance or to back up your data. The most common forms are RAID are 0 (Striping) and 1 (Mirroring). Striping improves performance, because it uses two disks as one. Basically, it breaks up data into two and writes one part to one disk and the other to the second disk. This results in faster performance, which is great because the hard drive is the bottleneck in all current-generation PCs. Of course, this also doubles your risk of losing data, because even if one disk dies, you lose all the data on both disks. Only gamers and those who need faster hard drives usually use RAID 0.

RAID 1, or Mirroring, may even result in a performance hit, but creates redundancy. Say you have two 250 GB hard drives, and set them in Mirroring mode. Windows will see them as one 250 GB hard drive. RAID 1 works by writing all data twice—once each to the two drives. What this does is create two copies of everything, so say if one hard drive dies, your system will just continue running like nothing ever happened. Beautiful, isn’t it?

Most of us don’t use RAID because it requires you to have two hard drives, preferably identical. So you end up spending double the money, and end up with a quite ridiculous cost-per-GB figure. However, after the three recent incidences of hard drives playing foul that I came across, an extra Rs 4,000 to mirror my existing 250 GB drive is worth it for the peace of mind I now have.

If you decide to use RAID 1, I suggest you keep your operating system on a third drive, so that formatting and reinstalling or virus attacks cannot threaten to wipe out your data. For example, I have an 80 GB drive that holds my OS and download folders, while my dual-250 GBs are in RAID 1, and hold everything that’s dear to me. The advantage is that I find the performance of my PC to be a little better, since the OS just reads and writes to my 80 GB, and mainly reads from the mirrored drives (when I’m playing audio or video or viewing pictures), and sometimes writes to both (when I back up important stuff). This helps to ensure that both disks last me a long time.

Stuff to remember: Check if your motherboard has RAID controllers—most motherboards made in the last two years will. Next, go out and buy two identical drives—although not necessary, it will save you from the potential headaches of mismatched sizes. Check your motherboard manual for instructions on how to set up RAID, or if you’re buying a separate RAID controller, follow the instructions given in the manual that accompanies it. Remember, for motherboards with onboard RAID controllers, you will need to enable it from the BIOS.

Windows Defrag

2007-12-17T17:12:00.000+05:30

Make Windows Defrag for You

Problem: While there’s some debate on the matter, expert consensus says that defragmenting a hard drive improves its performance and reduces the likelihood of problems. But as with any PC housekeeping chore, finding the time to defrag my disks is getting tougher and tougher.

Fast Fix: Make Windows do the disk-defragmenting. In XP, follow the same steps as in "Automate Your Disk Checking" to create a Scheduled Task, but when editing the command line in Advanced Properties, change it to cmd.exe /c defrag c: -f -v > "c:’doc’report.txt" (your switches and the path to your report file may be different).

In Vista, follow the same steps as in "Automate Your Disk Checking," but change the text in the ’Add arguments (optional)’ box to /c defrag -c -f -v -w > "c:’doc’report.txt" (your switches and report path may differ).

2007-12-17T17:07:00.000+05:30

Analyze Your System Security

Download the free Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) and let the program perform a security check of your computer. The tool’s reports include links to descriptions of the scan, details of the results, and ways to correct any problems it finds. MBSA works with any version of Windows from 2000 SP3 on, though Vista requires the 2.1 beta; MBSA also analyzes the security of Office, Exchange, and other Microsoft products. Download either the current version 2.0.1 or the beta 2.1 release. After installing the program, launch it and follow the prompts to analyze your own system or multiple computers.

Solve Sluggish Surfing

If surfing is less responsive or impossible, your PC may have caught an infection. Use an antivirus utility or a repair tool to check for problems. Or try Microsoft’s free Malicious Software Removal Tool; just download the applet and follow the instructions.

Install a new version of your browser, or patch your current one. To obtain the latest version of IE 7, choose Tools, Windows Update. In Mozilla Firefox, click Help, Check for Updates

.You may have an issue with browser plug-ins or add-ons. To test this, disable all add-ons. If the problem goes away, enable one add-on and test again. Repeat until you find the culprit.

To disable add-ons in Firefox, choose Tools, Add-ons, and click Disable by each item until all are off. Close the window and restart Firefox. If the problem is solved, reopen the Add-ons window, click Enable for one entry, close, and restart. Rinse and repeat as needed.

In IE 7, choose Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Internet Explorer (No Add-ons). If that solves the problem, restart IE normally and choose Tools, Manage Add-ons, Enable or Disable Add-ons. Pick an add-on and click Disable. Repeat this for all but one, and click OK twice. Restart IE. If everything is still fine, return to this dialog box, select another disabled add-on, and click Enable. Click OK twice and restart IE. Repeat until you find the misbehaving add-on.

Registry Hacks

2007-12-17T13:09:00.000+05:30

Warning: Tinkering with the Windows Registry isn’t for the weak-hearted.

Goofing off in this area can cause serious problems with your PC, so proceed with Extreme caution. We suggest turning on System Restore so that you can revert to the system state that existed before you did anything to the Registry.

Creating Program Aliases
Wouldn’t you just love being able to start programs by just going to the Start > Run dialog and typing in the name? Here’s how to do it:

1. Start the Registry Editor (Start > Run > “regedit”)
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionApp Paths and expand the tree—you’ll find a lot of entries for different .exe files.
3. Right-click on App Paths and select New > Key and give it a name—MyProgram.exe, for example
4. Select this value, and in the right-hand pane, double-click on the “Default” value. Under Value Data, enter the path of the program— “c:windowsnotepad.exe”, for example

Now, when you go to Start > Run and type “MyProgram”, the program you selected will come up.

Disable the expanding “New” menu in IE
Here’s how you can change the File > New menu in IE and replace it with File > New Window.
1. Start the Registry Editor (Start > Run > “regedit”)
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesExplorer

Set the DWORD value to 1

3. In the right-hand pane, create a new DWORD (Right-click > New > DWORD Value) and call it “NoExpandedNewMenu”
4. Double-click on this DWORD and set the Value Data to 1

IE’s new look!

Your Internet Explorer should now show you only New Window under the File menu. You can always revert this setting by setting the value of the DWORD to 0.

Configure the [Alt] + [Tab] CoolSwitch
You can use the Registry to tweak the appearance of the CoolSwitch dialog that you see when you use [Alt] + [Tab] to switch between applications.

1. Start the Registry Editor (Start > Run > “regedit”)
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktop
3. To enable or disable task switching altogether, modify the CoolSwitch value and set it to 1 or 0 respectively

Configuring the appearance of CoolSwitch

4. To alter the appearance of the CoolSwitch dialog, modify the values of CoolSwitchColumns and CoolSwitchRows

Block Registry Tools
Warning: This tip blocks the Registry editing tools for everyone—Administrator included—so only use this if you’re extremely paranoid about someone altering your registry. You will need third-party registry editors to get yourself out of this one.

1. Start the Registry Editor (Start > Run > “regedit”)
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPolicies System
3. In the right-hand pane, create a new DWORD value (Right-click > New > DWORD) and call it “DisableRegistryTools”
4. Double-click the DWORD and set the Value Data to 1
5. Restart Windows

Disable Registry Tools

Remember, only Microsoft’s inbuilt Registry tools (yes, regedit included) are blocked by this tweak. To change this back to the way it was, use a third-party Registry editor to change the value back to 0.

Yahoo! Messenger

Be a Stalker—I
If you’re worried that someone is avoiding you by either signing in as invisible or by changing their stealth setting so that they appear offline to you, here are three simple ways to check.

The first way is to use the Doodle IMVironment. Start an offline conversation with the contact and send them a dummy message. If they’re actually online, this should open a conversation window on their machine.

Loading doodle This is what you will see for a really long time if the contact is offline

Now, select the Doodle IMVironment from IMVironments > See All IMVironments > Yahoo Tools. If your contact is really offline, you’ll see “Waiting for your friend to load Doodle” for a really long time. If, however, your contact is online, the IMVironment should load in less than a minute and let you draw. Ta-da! Now you can satisfy your inner stalker once again.

For the Victims:
If you’re being annoyed by someone who’s using the above method, you could:
1. Add them to your ignore list, or
2. Disable IMVironments by going to Connection > Preferences and uncheck the “Enable IMVironments” box under Messages.

Be a Stalker—II and III
These methods are quite basic and may not necessarily always work.

Try to start a voice conversation with the contact. If the person is really offline, you will be asked to leave a voicemail after the ringing times out. If the person is invisible, all you’ll get is a “No Answer” message.

Another way is to invite the person to a conference. If the contact is offline, you’ll soon get an error message saying “Conference could not be started”. If the contact is online, your conference room will just sit empty till your contact either explicitly declines your invitation or if they finally relent and accept.

Google Talk

Run Google Talk with multiple e-mail addresses at the same time

If you’ve got many Gmail accounts and don’t want to keep logging on and off them every time you want to switch, a simple command line parameter in the Google Talk shortcut can solve your problem. First, create one copy of the Google Talk shortcut on your desktop—leave the original intact. Right-click on this shortcut and select Properties. The Target text box will show you the path of the EXE for Google Talk—something like “C:Program FilesGoogleGoogle Talkgoogletalk.exe”

The Google Talk shortcut Properties dialog

Change this to “C:Program FilesGoogleGoogle Talkgoogletalk.exe” /nomutex and click OK. You will now be able to run multiple instances of Google Talk with different identities for each.

Other Command line parameters for Google Talk
Just like you added the /nomutex parameter to the Google Talk shortcut, you can use the following parameters for other purposes:

/register: writes Google Talk’s settings to the Windows Registry
/checkupdate: checks for new versions of Google Talk
/factoryreset: reverts to the original settings
/mailto email@gmail.com: sends an e-mail through Gmail
/diag: starts Google Talk in diagnostic mode

Google Talk Keyboard Shortcuts
Here are some quick shortcuts to use with
Google Talk:
[Ctrl] + [E]—Centre-align text in the chat window
[Ctrl] + [R]—Right-align text in the chat window
[Ctrl] + [L]—Left-align text in the chat window
[Ctrl] + [I] or [Tab]—Cycle through windows
[Ctrl] + [Tab] or [Shift] + [Tab]—Cycle through windows in reverse order
[Ctrl] + [1]—Type single-spaced lines
[Ctrl] + [2]—Type double-spaced lines
[Ctrl] + [5]—Type 1.5-spaced lines
[Ctrl] + [1] (Numeric Keypad)—Go to the end of the last line
[Ctrl] + [7] (Numeric Keypad)—Go to the beginning of the first line
[Alt] + [Esc]—Close all Google Talk windows
[F9]—Send an e-mail to the current contact
[F11]—Start a phone call with the current contact
[F12]—Cancel the phone call
[Esc]—Close the current window

Sign out Properly

2007-12-17T12:56:00.000+05:30

Sign Out Properly

In Netscape, Mozilla and Firefox, if you close the Gmail tab, not the window, you’re still signed in. Anybody can open a new tab and go to Gmail and automatically get logged into your account. It’s therefore a good habit to sign out from a Gmail session by clicking the ‘Sign out’ link on the top right corner.

Compose In A New Window
Pressing [Shift] brings up a new window for composing. This is assuming your pop-up blocker is off. For example, when you press [Shift] and click on ‘Compose Mail’, a new window pops up for composition. You can also use [Shift] in conjunction with ‘Reply’, ‘Reply All’, and ‘Forward’.

A Secure Gmail Session
Gmail lets you have a secure HTTPS session via https://gmail.google.com. Use this link if you’re paranoid about security!

Return To The Inbox
To return to the inbox, you can, of course, click on the ‘Inbox’ link on the left-hand side, or if you’re in conversation view, click on the ‘Back to Inbox’ link above the conversation.

There is a green ‘Inbox’ label text next to the subject. You can also click the Gmail logo, a much larger target, to go back to the inbox. Clicking on the logo, the ‘Inbox’ link, or the ‘Refresh’ link will refresh the ‘Inbox’ with the latest messages received.

Selecting A Sub-Conversation
Have you ever had a long, multi-person conversation, and you wanted to concentrate on a particular sub-conversation with one person?

Let’s say you e-mailed three of your friends, Aditya, Bob, and Renuka, with the subject “Going okay?” and asked them all “How’s it going with you?”.

They all replied back and now you’ve gotten into three separate sub-conversations, all within the same Gmail conversation. There is an easy way to concentrate on your sub-conversation with, say, Aditya. Simply do the following search (without the square brackets):
[ subject:“going okay” (from:aditya OR to:aditya) ]

Then when you click on the conversation, it will open up with only the matching messages expanded.

The “to:” operator finds stuff in the to/cc/bcc fields. If you also cc-ed or bcc-ed Aditya in other messages that you don’t want to match the search (e.g. in your messages to Bob and Renuka), then do the search:
[ subject:“going okay” (from:aditya OR (to:aditya -cc:aditya -bcc:aditya)) ]

The “-cc:aditya” and “-bcc:aditya” terms eliminate the possibility of matching on messages cc-ed or bcc-ed to Aditya.

Sending Shortcuts
Send mail to fellow Gmailers by entering the username in the ‘To’, ‘Cc’, or ‘Bcc’ area. There’s no need to include ‘@gmail.com’!

If your e-mail address is firstname.lastname@gmail.com, and now you wish you didn’t have the period, you’re in luck. For some reason, Gmail treats that e-mail address the same as one without a period (and vice-versa), so firstnamelastname @gmail.com works just as well as firstname.lastname @gmail.com. Gmail is flexible with regards to capitalisations, too!

Searching For Names
In Gmail, “or” is not the same as “OR”. Only the capitalised version (sans quotes) will work with searches. Also, the actual search terms are not case-sensitive. “adi” works just as good as “Adi”. Using the same example, it’s important to realise that the search engine of Gmail does not search partial words. So “adi” will not find “Aditya”.

Performing Actions On A Group Of E-mails
Let’s say you have 150 e-mails, listed over two pages (100 maximum per page), and you want to archive all of them.

You might make the mistake of clicking ‘All’, then hitting ‘Archive’ and thinking that this would do the trick. It doesn’t. Commands such as ‘Trash’, ‘Archive’ or ‘Label’ only affect items that are both selected and on the page you’re currently viewing.

Don’t forget that when you archive or label e-mail, you’re affecting the entire conversation of e-mails by default. If you want to trash just one of the e-mails in a conversation, you can do this by expanding that particular e-mail, clicking on ‘More Options’, and then clicking ‘Trash this message’.

2007-12-16T11:13:00.000+05:30

If you thought the only threats on the Internet are viruses and you are well guarded from it, think again!

Picture this-you are on a lonely street in an alien land heading to your destination with no real sense of direction. Your only company is a stalking inconspicuous being, and hawk-like eyes are monitoring your every twitch. If this isn’t enough, there’s a predator around who is waiting to rob your personal details and take your identity. FLASH! In just a second, you are stranded in the middle of nowhere. If you thought, this was a Hitchcock plot, then I’m afraid to pop your bubble but this is the reality we live in every single day on the Internet.

“Every coin has two sides”, is an analogy fit for every situation in life. It is not different in the advent of computers. Initially, programs were developed to eliminate the manual handling of data, but then we live in a wild world which also has conniving people who develop programs to create havoc. Creating viruses began as a prank but soon it took an ugly turn and it was used as a tool to harass netizens. Viruses are no longer touring the cyber world in solitude. Malware has stepped in. Malware is a collection of various malicious programs that are constantly on a damaging spree threatening Internet users.

Malware? what’s that?
Malware is the collective term to describe malicious programs; these include viruses, Trojans, Spyware, Adware, Rootkits, Netbots, Backdoors, Key-Loggers, Fraudulent dialers, the list is endless. Some of the other threats include Phishing and Pharming. All this might keep you wondering whether it’s still safe to be active on the Internet with this prevailing insecurity? We bring you the answer straight from one of the market leaders in security solutions-Quick Heal antivirus, India’s only indigenously developed antivirus software.

We were fortunate to be invited by CAT computer services-the makers of Quick Heal antivirus-to their R&D facility at Pune, Maharashtra. Mr. Sanjay Katkar, the CTO and Mr. Kailash Katkar the CEO, were very co-operative in providing us information on current trends of viruses and also giving insight of how antivirus companies combat the Malware menace.

Who’s responsible?
Malware development isn’t restricted to any particular country. It is mostly targeted at nations with high penetration of Internet connectivity. These include regions like US, Europe, Japan etc. Also, Malware developed in one nation can spread rapidly to another country thousands of miles away. Initially it was difficult to trace the origin of any virus, but over the years, security experts have noticed that many of the attacks are targeted towards developed nations, though the virus developers may be from other countries such as the east European bloc.

The scenario now
Though the origin of malicious programs began with viruses, some years ago worms spreading through e-mails became a major threat too. In the last couple of years the trend has shifted to Spyware, Back doors and Trojans which are comparatively greater in number as compared to viruses or worms. Earlier there were about 20-30 worms released per month but now the count has jumped to 40-50 worms per month.Interestingly the Trojan count has shot from 18-20 per month to 300-400 per month. In short any computer connected to the Internet which isn’t armed with an updated antivirus is prone to be infected by Malware.

Presently, the Malware released every month is roughly between the range of 300-400 per day. Out of this glaring figure, viruses just constitute about 5 percent of the total Malware count. In the last two years, the authors of Malware have been developing them for commercial benefits such as spamming of advertisements and stealing credit card information of users and selling them to potential buyers who misuse the acquired information. Pharming is also a major threat, for instance, a fake website posing as your bank’s website asks you to update your personal details and misuses it.

Combating Malware
Most of the time an updated antivirus is equipped to combat Malware as the antivirus contains the virus signatures which are unique to every virus. With hundreds of viruses releasing each day, it’s not feasible to manually find the virus signature of each and every virus; hence an automated system is used.

For instance, the makers of Quick Heal developed an automated system to analyze the trapped malicious programs and find the virus signatures automatically as most of the viruses are variants of a handful of viruses. Only if a rare sample is detected, does the virus signatures get manually extracted.

To create a virus signature, an antivirus company collects the infected samples through their various honeypots (a system of computers that are made susceptible to Malware attacks but are constantly monitored) located in different countries. The malware is trapped in these honeypots and are scrutinized and categorized according to the type of Malware; for instance, whether it is a Virus, Worm, Trojan etc.

Once the Malware is categorized, a specific procedure is followed. If it’s a virus, it is required to be spread over a wide range of platforms and monitor its activities as their behavior varies from platform to platform. Later it is transferred to an analyzer to check if the virus is polymorphic or monomorphic.

The nomenclature of a Malware is done according to the guidelines set by an organization named EICAR (European Institute for Computer Anti-Virus Research). While naming the Malware, it is kept in mind not to include the name of the virus developer to avoid giving undue importance to such activities.

The normal time required in finding the solution to a virus outbreak is 6-8 hrs. In the initial 2-3 hrs of a virus outbreak there is no solution by any antivirus company. In 48 hours all the antivirus companies are out with the solution. But what happens till the virus updates are released and the Malware spread is going great guns causing menace? The solution is ‘Heuristics’, and is used by some antivirus programs today.

Heuristics is a process in which the detection of previously unknown Malware can be done up to some extent. Heuristics analyzes all programs running in the computer and detects if any one of them is functioning in an abnormal manner. In order to do this it quarantines a sample of the infected file and uses an emulator or a virtual environment within the OS known as Sandbox, wherein the infectious sample is tested. If the program is found guilty it is eliminated from the system or else it is let go.

Nowadays, antivirus developers need to think beyond heuristics, as it requires a lot of system resources; also this process can’t be achieved in real time. For instance, when you receive an attachment with an e-mail it is not possible to create a sandbox and check for the unknown Malware. To resolve this, Quick Heal has come up with an ingenious solution called the DNA scan technology. What it does is, it senses each and every change effected by an application in the computer and analyzes the code that is executed in the computer. If it comes across an application whose behavior is suspected to be malicious, it quarantines the file and also traces all the changes done by the application in the computer. The sample is then sent to Quick Heal labs automatically after the user approves of it and the sample is analyzed automatically.

DNA scan technology can also detect those applications whose coding appears suspect. For instance, if a programmer used to develop Malware earlier, and if he has mended his ways now, and written a genuine application, his coding pattern might be the same and might not have followed the standard coding procedure. Even this is detected by the DNA scan.

In one such incident, a Quick Heal client in France stated that he has a genuine program but the DNA scan detected it as a virus. Quick Heal developers analyzed the application and found that the application was genuine but it was not coded using standard procedures of EICAR. It was later found that the application was written by a developer who had a past in developing viruses. The application was written partly in assembly language, visual studio and at some instances, encryption was used. Now the antivirus developers in their forum have decided not to recruit a person if he has ever been involved in the development of a virus unless he serves his term and assures he would not get in to such criminal activities anytime in the future.

Shareware or freeware
Most of us might be satisfied with the free antivirus products which are only meant for home users. These same antivirus software also have a shareware version. In case of a virus outbreak, the shareware users get the first priority to download the updates followed by freeware users. Hence, the freeware user is prone to get affected by the virus outbreak. Also for the shareware users, the updates are hosted on high priority servers hence the antivirus can be updated in less time as compared to the freeware users that get updates from a low priority low bandwidth server. So if your computer has critical data and is always connected to the net, a shareware or paid version is always advised.

Future of Malware
Earlier viruses were developed to gain fame, but these days Malware is being developed for commercial purpose. Hence, the trend of developing more deadly Malware is going to continue in a big way. There has been an upsurge of programmers who develop and sell Malware for financial gains.

For instance, a Bot is developed to track a PC not patched for certain vulnerability and is connected to the Internet. Once these PCs are detected, the Bot is loaded into all these PCs and when these are spread over a network of thousands to a million PCs they are known as a Botnet. The author of the Bot now has control of all the PCs that are infected by the Bot created by him and now he can get various viruses or Trojans downloaded into the various infected PCs. This Botnet is then sold to a potential buyer, such as an adware developer who wants their ads to appear across all the PCs. The adware developer in this case instructs the Botnet owner to download a certain Trojan that contains his ads into the infected computers and within seconds the entire set of PC’s in that Botnet are infected.

In case of phishing websites, the buyer of the Botnet can lead you to a fake website that pose as a genuine secure website, misleading you into entering your bank account details and this information is passed on to malicious users for fraudulent activities. A Botnet created in one country may spread rapidly in some other faraway nation. Bringing such Malware creators to justice is not possible because the cyber laws of all nations are not the same and worse-some nations do not have any. With the advancement in mobile networks as 3G gets introduced offering fast Internet, these new avenues will enable fraudsters get quicker access to people’s personal information. Viruses can be evolved to such an extent that they can infect devices running on a similar platform.

A piece of advice
“Prevention is better than cure”,so update your antivirus software regularly, do not disclose your personal details unnecessarily on the Internet, and if you find anything supicious do not just overlook it. Till we meet again with another update on online security-Safe Surfing

Jam! Jammer

2007-12-16T10:41:00.000+05:30

Technological advancements and their implementations are either perceived as a blessing or a curse. Online Expedition gives you the lowdown on cell phone jammers and weighs whether they are a boon or bane.

How dependent are you on your cell phone? We guessed right if your answer is ‘very dependent’. It is a fact that cell phones have become a necessity today—we’d gather a crowd of cynics if we said that cell phones will stop working in the future. But on second thoughts, there might be some truth to it. Let’s marinate on that and go back to the inception of mobile technology.

The cell phone fad hit the Indian market like lightning on a vulnerable night. The best part—for most of us—is that, it stayed, it grew and it has now engulfed us like a bush fire. Today cell phones are arguably a style statement but undoubtedly a necessity for convenient communication. But there are times when it becomes important not to be able to use a cell phone. Before delving into this situation, let’s go through a primer on cell phone technology.

‘E.T. phone home’
Did you know that the cell phones use the same principles as a radio? Well partially they do. We’re not talking about the internal FM radio in your phone that you use to hear music. Cell phones work roughly like walkie-talkies that you must have used in your adolescent years—the major difference being their need to communicate with a ‘base station’ instead of directly with each other. Also, walkie-talkies are half-duplex devices that transmit and receive at one particular frequency, while cell phones are full-duplex devices that use two separate frequencies simultaneously. Cell phones, better known as mobile phones, are 2-way radios that interchange radio signals with the base stations of the network provider (for example, Hutch or Airtel in Mumbai). The radios we use for listening to music also operate using radio waves, but those frequencies are very low, for example 98.3 MHz. In some phones, if you open the back panel (battery compartment) you’ll notice the frequencies (eg, 900 MHz) at which the phone can be operated. These frequencies are clearly much higher than our radio sets. Lower frequencies are used in several other applications such as aircraft communications and higher frequencies in microwave ovens. So this explains why we are refrained from using cell phones and electronic devices on a flight.

No brain-chewing
Picture yourself in a restaurant or in a library or any of those quiet places. There is this person next to you who is engrossed in a high-decibel conversation right in your face. This can be painfully brain-chewing. So what do you do? In a dire situation like this, using a device known as a cell phone jammer could bring you immediate salvation. Besides the fact that it’s illegal, using one can get you in trouble especially if you’re trying to play a prank. Although illegal in many countries like the United States, there are people who use hand-held cell phone jammers in other parts of the world. So before buying or using one, it is strongly recommended to check on it on the legal front. More on how this device works later on.

‘Let’s JAM it’
Shockingly, cell phones are being used to do a lot more than just make or receive calls and text messages (SMS etc). If you have seen the movie ‘The Jackal’, you’ll know exactly what we’re talking about. Here, Bruce Willis (the jackal) uses a cell phone to control his radio controlled sniper gun hidden in a vehicle yards away.
On a serious note: Assuming that you’ve been watching the news lately, the Mumbai train blasts are alleged to have involved cell phone triggers to set off the explosives. Check out the ‘In The News’ box to know more. But guess what—if a cell phone was the cause, then a jammer could have saved the day.
Jammers are powerful and intricate devices, but unfortunately not too many people might know much about them. So let’s dive deeper and resurrect this potential savior.

Jammers! Say what?
Jammers are radio frequency transmitters that block radio communication between devices—in this case a cell phone. They simply disable the cell phone from making or receiving voice or data calls and messaging by preventing cellular signals from reaching it. There are different types and sizes of jammers depending on their power and coverage range. Most hand held jammers look like normal cell phones and they use cell phone batteries. Larger jammers can be as big as a briefcase and can be used with a normal power outlet.
Jammers were mainly intended for military operations to track terrorist activities by disrupting their radio communication. Although they were introduced for law enforcement, they are increasingly being incorporated in other civilian areas of use.

How does it work?
A cell phone uses two separate frequencies; one is used for transmitting (talking) and the other for receiving (hearing). The signal originating from one phone is sent to the base station and from where it is relayed to the recipient. When a cell phone comes into the range of an active jammer, the signals originating from the cell phone collide with the signals of the jammer. This effectively cancels out the phone signals. Most jammers cancel one frequency of the cell phone which does the trick. Since one signal gets cancelled, the phone interprets that there is no network and hence stops functioning. In the case of rather sophisticated jammers, all the signals that the phone can receive get cancelled. This ensures that the phone does not receive an open signal to work with.

Jammers & Jargon
Since the last century, people have been using FM radios to listen to music and news. We all know that they work on radio waves that travel through air at different frequencies. Similarly, cell phones use radio waves to transmit and receive signals at very high frequencies as discussed earlier—but in this case they carry digital information instead of the analog format used in radios. Other government services like local fire departments, police department, conservation parks and emergency rescue departments also use radio transceivers to communicate. These radio frequencies can be scanned and heard on other radios if they are tuned to the same frequency. Scanning is prohibited by law in many countries, so one must know and adhere to the respective laws applicable to them.

As opposed to scanners, jammers can transmit radio signals at different frequencies. Small hand held jammers are comparatively weaker and have a range of about 30 feet, whereas larger ones might spread across foot ball fields. Jammers comprise of three main components—the Antenna, the main circuit and the power source. Cell phone jammers transmit signals at almost all frequencies and they can transmit at similar frequencies as those used by cell phones. For instance, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 1900 MHz (in United States) are frequencies used by GSM networks. They work well with all the other types of networks as well, such as AMPS, CDMA, TDMA, GSM and many more.

The Paint
In the near future, if you’d like to stop the usage of cellular phones at your office or your home, you’d need to simply paint it. A company called NaturalNano Inc, is in the process and development of a special type of paint that uses halloysite nanotubes coated with copper. This special paint, when applied to the exterior of a room or an enclosure might be able to block radio waves at particular frequencies, and this inlcudes cell phone signals. Other variants of this technology would also enable it to hamper the reception of WiFi communications and other electronic devices dependant on radio communication.

Halloysite Nanotubes
www.naturalnano.com
These nanotubes are formed naturally over millions of years by surface weathering of aluminosilicate minerals, halloysite nanotubes comprise silicon, hydrogen and oxygen. They are microscopically tiny, measuring less than 100 nanometres. Simply put, a bunch of halloysite nanotubes would show as a dot on a human hair—if you could see one. The scientists at NaturalNano are developing methods to incorporate them in electronic components for domestic and commercial applications.

Nitroboost your MP3

2007-12-16T10:34:00.000+05:30

Maximize the utility of your MP3 player and get much more out of it. Online Expedition helps you value the usually ignored functions of an MP3 player and guides you how to optimize them.

MP3 players have evolved into mighty all-in-one devices over the years. Today, these tiny gizmos have a lot more to offer than the standard audio/video playback, FM radio and voice recorder. MP3 players are now capable of displaying lyrics synchronized with playback, encoding audio on-the-fly and even recording radio programs in your absence. You may have an MP3 player that boasts all these features, but the question is how can you get the most out of your player. You will find all your answers here. If you plan to buy an MP3 player soon, you can base your buying decision on some of the features described here.

Recorder
Most MP3 players, especially the solid state ones that feature an array of functions, come equipped with a microphone for recording purposes. The recorder function is usually labeled as ‘voice recorder’ in the main menu of the player because its primary function is to capture voice. Thus, it comes in handy when you want to record conversations, interviews, meetings, conferences and lectures at schools and colleges. Apart from capturing voice, the players that have a built-in FM tuner can also record radio programs on air. To record a radio program that is being aired you simply have to press the record button while being tuned into the desired radio station. Now you know what to do the next time you wish to record your favorite number that’s playing on air.

External mic support
MP3 players that feature a voice recorder use a built-in microphone to capture voice. The microphone is highly-sensitive and is hidden behind a tiny aperture on the body of the player. This aperture is usually labeled as ‘mic’ so that you don’t cover it by mistake while you’re recording. Though the built-in microphone is quite sensitive, its range is restricted due to its diminutive size. Hence, in order to clearly capture the voice of subjects that are more than two meters away, you have to place or hold the player close to them while recording. This scenario generally arises when you want to record interviews, meetings or lectures. In such cases, it’s preferable to use an external microphone with your player provided there is support for it—a computer mic that you use for online voice chat will also suffice. The external mic plugs into the line-in jack of the player and the external mic support has to be enabled by changing the player’s recording settings.

Line-In
With line-in support you can hook up external audio sources such as television, audio cassette /CD / LP player to your MP3 player. If your MP3 player has line-in support, it will feature a line-in jack in addition to the earphone jack. In order to hook up an external source to your MP3 player, you need to connect the line-out jack of the source with the line-in jack of your player using the bundled line-in cable. On pressing the record button in the line-in mode you can record playback from the connected audio source. The line-in recording feature is ideal for converting audio cassettes into digital audio formats on-the-fly, on to the player.

Playback speed control
Using this feature you can adjust the speed of the playback. Though it may not make sense to use it while listening to music, it can be very useful while transcribing recorded interviews and lectures. If you’re a slow typist, you can reduce the playback speed to keep up with the pace of the playback of the recording.

Lyrics support
If your player’s list of specifications includes lyrics support, it is capable of displaying the lyrics of the song being played. When switched to the lyrics mode, the player displays the lyrics of each line being sung while the song plays. However, note that the lyrics will only be displayed if you have added the lyrics to the MP3 file or the music folder on your MP3 player. The utility for adding lyrics to the songs should be included on the software disc that comes bundled with the player. Some of the popular lyrics websites are www.lyricsfreak.com, www.lyricsdomain.com and www.seeklyrics.com.

Direct encoding
If your MP3 player supports direct encoding, it means that it can encode audio to MP3 or WMA format in real time while recording. This feature is a big space saver as compressed audio files take up only one-tenth the space required by WAV files. 1 GB MP3 players having support for direct encoding can record audio up to six hours which would otherwise require 3.5 GB of space. Setting the right bitrate for various functions is crucial for managing space and sound quality. A low bitrate (96 kbps for MP3 and 64 kbps for WMA) is enough for recording voice. However, set the bitrate high (between 192 to 320 kpbs for MP3 and 128 kbps for WMA) for FM or line-in recording to get better audio quality.

Scheduled recording
With support for scheduled recording you won’t miss your favorite radio programs. Settings for scheduled recording can be accessed under alarms settings in the player’s settings menu. Set the alarm mode to FM recording and specify the wake up time, the FM station and recording duration. Make sure the player’s clock is set to the right time or else your schedule will go for a toss. If you’ve done everything right, the player will automatically switch on at the scheduled time, record the radio program for the specified duration and then turn off.

Nero Ninja The Mushaves tricks

2007-12-16T10:29:00.001+05:30

There’s nothing easier than popping a blank disk into a drive and burning data on it using Nero. But beneath the surface of this application lies a wealth of cool tricks!

This much is undisputed—when it comes to CD and DVD burning, Nero is the sensei among other applications in its class. Over the years, it has grown to encompass a huge variety of applications and capabilities and in its current version, it allows you to do a lot more than just burn data on disks—there’s support for the new Blu-ray and HD-DVD standards, the ability to edit and author audio and video compilations, and even manage multimedia files scattered all across your home or office network. Perhaps it should stop being called just a DVD-burning application!

However, you may have noticed that there are several occasions where you would have expected Nero to burn your CD or DVD, only to find that the task does not complete correctly, or the disk is unreadable after the burn. This could happen even when you use new ‘branded’ media. Over the next few pages, you will find solutions to all of these niggling annoyances. To start, many of Nero’s problems can be alleviated by configuring it the right way after installing the program. Once this is addressed, you will be able to repeatedly create error-free disks, run tests to find out how reliable your new stack of blank DVDs are, and even pack more data than is advertised on your disks—all reliably!

Configuring for Nero: Activate the Ultra DMA mode
Even though I know I have a fast drive and fast media, Nero burns disks a snail’s pace. Why does this happen?

Solution: This can be attributed to a little setting associated with the way your DVD- or CD-Writer is connected to your system—it is called the DMA mode. This is a speedy mode of data transfer in which the drive directly communicates with your computer’s RAM. If this mode is disabled, your system will default to a much slower mode called PIO. This mode is too slow to support the quick burning speeds supported by today’s DVD-Writer drives. It is possible that this setting gets changed by the system after consecutively burning bad quality media, or via other programs like disk imagers that use their own drivers. Either way, you have to make sure your drive is running in Ultra DMA mode—here’s how it is done.

Open the Device Manager and navigate to the ‘IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers’ section in the device listing. Expand this and double-click on the Primary IDE Channel. In the Advanced Settings tab, ensure that the selection in the Transfer Mode box is set to ‘DMA if available’. Change this setting if it indicates ‘PIO Only’. Do the same for both, Device 0 and Device 1. Hit OK and repeat these steps for the Secondary IDE channel. Of course, you could directly set this value if you knew which channel your DVD-Writer was attached to, but there’s no harm in enabling Ultra DMA mode for all channels as virtually every hard disk and DVD-Writer supports this mode these days. You would need to restart your computer, after which you should experience significantly quicker burns.

Identify sub-standard blank disks
Even though you have always been buying reasonably-priced blank CD and DVD media of a particular brand, Nero has started burning them at a slower speed.

Solution: Every so often, the speed advertised on a DVD media package differs from the capability of the disks inside. There are some distributors who even buy disks and switch them between products. Some of the more notorious examples include disks from brands like Princo and Memorex—you might come across these media even if you bought a spindle of Sony writeable disks.

You can use an interesting capability of Nero, where it can identify the characteristics of a blank CD or DVD, including the manufacturer’s name and the batch. This gives good insight into the quality of the media.

To do this, insert a blank DVD in the drive and open ‘Tools | Nero CD-DVD Speed’ found in the start menu of Nero. Here, select your drive in the pop-up menu and the tool starts reading the blank disk. Under the ‘Disk Info’ tab, you will find an entry called ‘MID’ (Manufacturer Identity). If this MID entry consists of zeroes, it indicates a production defect that is usually associated with cheap imitation disks. The result: Nero will still attempt to burn the disk at a lowered speed, since the program is unable to determine the burning speed as indicated by manufacturers on every blank disk they create. When you locate the MID, you can determine its pedigree by heading over to the website www.digitalfaq.com/media /dvdmedia.htm. Here, blank disks from several manufacturers are divided into four classes with the best being Class 1 and the worst being Class 4. As a rule of thumb, avoid using Class 3 and 4 media.

Flawless extraction of audio CD tracks
Is Nero truly the best choice for extracting audio from my favorite CDs?

Solution: A tool called ‘Nero CD-DVD Speed’ can evaluate how effectively your CD or DVD burner can copy Audio CDs on your hard disk without any errors. Insert an audio CD into your drive and launch this tool. Go to ‘Run Test’ and select ‘DAE quality’. While running this test, the application extracts sections from the Audio CD and compares these sections with original audio. It then returns a value between 0 and 10 in the ‘DAE quality’ field. You can blindly use Nero to copy audio CDs to your hard disk if you see the value ‘10’, and especially if Nero CD-DVD Speed activates the checkbox ‘Accurate stream’. If not, we recommend using other specialized tools such as Exact Audio Copy to copy audio, as these verify the read audio stream to ensure accuracy.

Stuff a blank disk to its brim
When you burn a CD or DVD, it recognizes the disk’s recommended capacity. Is there any way this can be exceeded safely, to pack in more data?

Solution: Blank media manufacturers always leave a bit of extra room on their writeable CDs and DVDs—this is like a safety margin so that the advertised capacity can be relieably written in accordance with CD or DVD standards. However, if you know how to you can instruct Nero to exceed a media’s given capacity and squeeze in some extra data into each burn. This is known as overburning and the amount of overburning varies between brands of blank CD and DVD media. But know that there are risks invoved—in the worst case, setting the Overburn value in Nero to the maximum can even damage your DVD burner. Therefore, it is recommended to first measure the safe overburn value with Nero CD-DVD Speed in advance, before regularly overburning your disks. Here’s how you do it:

First insert a blank disk, start the program and open the ‘Overburning test’ under ‘Tools’. This tool attempts to safely pack in as much data as it can on your CD or DVD. At the end, it gives you the time that you can overburn the blank disk in minutes and seconds (time relates to the amount of extra Audio CD information you can pack in). For example, you could expect around 2:30 minutes on a normal 700 MB CD-R. This translates to about 15 MB of data storage.

You will now need to enter this value in Nero. Open the program and go to the ‘Expert Features’ via ‘File | Options’. Activate the checkbox for ‘Activate Disk-at-once CD overburning’. Click on ‘Relative maximum overburning size’ and enter the determined value in its field—in this case, enter a value of ‘2:30’. Activate the checkbox ‘Enable generation of short lead-out’ to exhaust the capacity of the blank disk. Both entries together would give you about 15 MB of additional storage on a 700 MB blank disk when you burn in the Disk-at-once mode. Remember to use the same brand of blank DVD for all subsequent burning projects. If you change the brand of your blank media, it is recommended that you run this exercise again to ascertain its overburn capability.

Copy films without compromising on its quality
The Nero Recode tool has converted one of my films from a DVD9 format (dual layer) to a DVD5 format (single layer). But Nero now claims that it is not compatible with the DVD5 standard.

Solution: Sometimes DVD copiers such as Recode compute the characteristics of the DVD video incorrectly, resulting in a file that is about 100 MB more than the rated capacity of a DVD5 disk. This causes problems when you try and copy this movie file onto a blank disk as its capacity will be exceeded. You can rectify this without further lowering the movie quality which would anyway be reduced due to the recoding.

Start Recode and select ‘Recode Main Movie to DVD’. Re-import the converted video with the ‘Compile a DVD’ option from Recode’s main menu. Select the imported file and hit the ‘Trim movie’ button—do this by setting the second-last chapter as end point in the right window. As a rule, the last DVD chapter consists of the movie’s end credits—by eliminating this, you will gain around 100 to 150 MB of space. You can check whether this is sufficient by clicking on ‘OK’ in Recode’s main window: the slider for ‘Video quality’ should now indicate ‘100%’.

This trick does not work directly in Recode if you have created the copy with a DVD menu. The ‘Compress movie’ option will be missing under ‘Recode DVDs and videos to Nero Digital’. Try out the following if you want to retain the DVD menus: simply copy the menu and control files of the original copy to the folder of the second. This includes all files except the main movie file. Check whether the DVD compilation functions in a DVD player such as Nero Showtime before you burn it.

A hidden setting for ultimate video quality
You plan to copy a very long film to DVD5 using Recode. In doing so, you do not want to compromise on the image quality at all. What can I do besides the standard Nero video configuration settings?

Solution: There are registry entries for four different video quality levels that are hidden from direct access via Recode. However, you can tap into these through the registry. First launch the Registry Editor using ‘Run | Regedit’. Navigate your way to the ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareAheadRecodePreferences’ directory. You will find the entry ‘CompressMode’ here. With a double-click, you can assign a value between ‘0’ and ‘3’ to it. 0 represents ‘maximum sharpness’ (sharp video quality) and 3 represents ‘maximum smoothness’ (fuzzy video quality). Select the value ‘3’ for films over 150 minutes in duration and for old film material, as this setting reduces artifacts and blockiness. In normal cases (films with a running time of under two hours), Recode achieves best results with this value set to ‘0’. If you have not yet copied anything using Recode, this entry will not exist in the registry. You will therefore need to create it yourself—after navigating to the above location, click ‘New | DWORD value’ and name it ‘CompressMode’. Assign the desired compression mode by double-clicking on it and typing in the appropriate value.

Enabling this functionality is now simpler with a program called the Recode AEC Changer (Adaptive Error Compensation) tool, which has been created by an enthusiast. You will find it in the following forum: Digital Forum. This tool provides easy access to modifying the registry entries described above. However, many virus scanners may wrongly report this as a virus when you call up the tool. You can ignore this.

FreeProxy

2007-12-15T17:57:00.000+05:30

FreeProxy

Available from www.handcraftedsoftware.org , FreeProxy is,well,free!

Made for the windows platform,it offers all the important features that you want:content filtering(keyword/url,etc.),time based access,user-based access control,auto-dialing,access report generation,caching,a web server,ability to run as a service,etc.It offers almost the same functionality as Proxy+ ,and at an unbeatable price - 0 INR ,It’s ideal for smaller companies though-10 users or less-according to prominent software reviewers,and seems to perform less effectively as the number of users increase.Still the software is still being actively and passionately developed,and FreeProxy is by the far most popular windows-based Proxy server.If you have 15 or less PC’s in your company,look no further than FreeProxy

Squid Revealed

2007-12-15T17:32:00.001+05:30

If you have a PC to spare,and are familiar with Linux,you should definitely look at squid.This open source proxy server is the de facto choice of larger businesses. With all the interfaces you can imagine,stability that's unbeatable and the capability of handling thousands of concurrent connections without overloading the CPU,nothing beats squid in terms of scalability.

The only drawback for the average Indian SoHo Office is the need of machine running Linux-However with Linux gaining popularity amongst PC enthusiasts and Digit readers,We expect Squid to gain a few popularity points over the years.You can download it,or read more about it at the squid website:
www.squid-cache.org

Neutralize Bad Web sites

2007-11-24T18:30:00.000+05:30

We ALL know that our trusty web browsers are far from trustworthy these days.So how do you make sure you can surf the web safely? A Microsoft Research Project called BrowserShield hopes to solve the problem by analyzing dynamic web pages and rewriting their codes on the fly to edit out dodgy behaviour.If a site attempts to download a file without your permission,

for example,BrowserShield could edit out offending code and display the rest of the page. That's fairly easy to do on a static page,but the wealth of dynamic content online makes the task much more difficult. The researchers plan to work with other microsoft teams to add the technology to future browser plugins,firewalls and other software.

Format your iPod for PCs

2007-11-24T18:15:00.000+05:30

OUT of THE BOX,Your new Ipod may be configured to work not with a PC but with a Mac.Before you try to use it ,You must Format it to work with WIndows' File System (A Mac will recognize a Windows Formatted iPod but the reverse is not true)Download Itunes (www.apple.com/ipod/start/),Install it then plugin your Ipod. On the left side of the ITunes windows you should see 'deviced' and your iPod below it.Click the iPods name,then click restore to the right and follow the prompts/This will reformat your device for use with windows.If Windows can't see youriPod at all,try Apple's troubleshooting steps at www.apple.com/support/ipod/five_rs/

Move Big Files Across Internet

2007-11-24T17:58:00.000+05:30

IT's CONSIDERED RUDE - and rightly so -to email someone a file larger than a few megabytes without permission.And you may not be able to anyway,Sice many ISOs place a cap on message size (often 10MB or less)So what are you to do if you need to send an 18MB an 80MB or even 800MB file to someone? Online services make the task much easier and more elegant than burning a DVD and dropping it in the Mail. MediaFire.com is my favourite and it's one of the best on the market now. The Free service requires no registration and it allows unlimited maximum file size,unlimited downloads and multiple simultaneous downloads

The other services below however also have certain unique features that may make them more suitable for you

Files-Upload.com Handles 300 MB files through a web based interface without registration:Files expire after 45 days. Register and you get your own FTP subdomain that's accessible with standard FTP client. It has a 1 GB file-size limit
GigaSize.com Has a 1.5 GB file-size limit and srores files for 90 days. A $4 monthly fee gets you a 2.5 GB size limit
Pando.com Has a 1 GB file-size limit,but offers a peer to peer plugin for various e-mail,Web mail and instant messenger client,So you don't have to go to the website to transfer files.
Xdrive.com Gives you 5GB of free storage space,accessible through the web or a Windows Explorer plugin that also allows for sharing with others