Reliance Broadband is an ISP in India and they use a web browser based authentication system to log the user onto their network. One of their most popular plans the – Night Booster 4X offers 4 times more speed than day for unlimited  downloads from 10PM to 8AM. Now if there was a way to turn on your system at 10PM, automatically login to Asianet and turn your download manager on and then shutdown at 8AM it would have been perfect. The only problem is that the http based authentication system makes it a bit unwieldy to automate. Well not really . I found a bash script to automate this login process.

Features

- Automatically connect to Asianet Dataline without having to sign in via the browser.
- In startup and free mode the script will keep the connection alive.
- The script will automatically reconnect if connection breaks because of a power failure or a line problem.
- In free mode the script will call any related startup and shutdown scripts placed inside the ~/.auto-login/startup and ~/.auto-login/shutdown folders.

Setup Instructions

a) Copy script to your favorite scripts folder.
b) Edit script to update username and password with your Asianet login information.
c) Add script to your startup process. See different ways of using the script below to know more.
d) If you want to start and stop other applications at the time of starting the script then create a folder ~/.auto-login and inside that create sub-folders startup and shutdown. Place other scripts that have to be called during startup and shutdown of this script into the respective folders. Make sure that these scripts have their executable bit set.

Different ways of using the script

1) Add a shortcut to your task bar to launch the script with the parameter “auto”. Use this shortcut to start the connection with one click and stop the connection with one click. Remember that the connection will time out if there is no activity. But that should not be a problem because you can connect again with a single click.
2) Add the script to your startup process with parameter “startup”. This will keep the script running in the background and the script will keep the connection alive with keep-alive requests.
3) Add the script to your startup process with parameter “free”. This will keep the script running in the background and the script will connect only during the free download hours and then it will keep the connection alive with keep-alive requests until the free time ends. When free time ends it will disconnect the connection. In this mode the script will also run any related startup and shutdown scripts placed inside the ~/.auto-login/startup and ~/.auto-login/shutdown folders.

The latest source can be downloaded from http://github.com/anoopjohn/Asianet-Auto-Login-Script

If there are issues with the script please use the github issue queue at http://github.com/anoopjohn/Asianet-Auto-Login-Script/issues

If you are a fan of Google products (I must say its getting increasingly hard to come across someone who is not) you might be using Google related software on your computer. As I am about to buy a new computer, I was looking up what is new that Google has to offer. Google Pack is a nice one stop shop to download various Google related software you might want to download in one go.

About Google Pack

• Visit the Google Pack page, and look up which Google affiliated software is missing on your computer.
• You can check which one you want installed and start downloading.
• Google Pack includes Chrome browser, Google Earth, Google Talk, Google Apps, Google Desktop, Picassa, Real Player, Adobe Reader, Google Toolbar for Firefox and Internet Explorer and Skype.
• All these software applications can be downloaded from just once installation if you are using a Windows OS.
• If you are using a Mac, you might want to check out their Mac page which also is a one stop page to download various mac related Google applications.

Try it out and let me know what you think about Google Pack through your comments.

Links: Google Pack (Win) | Mac

Smarter Fox is a Firefox browser add-on which does exactly what it claims. It makes your browser a lot more smarter. It quickens up the browsing experience a lot but giving the user a host of options to search and lookup information.

Smarter Fox Features

• Awesomebar: This is a enhanced version of Bookmarks. If you want to go to a particular page just press Ctrl + Spacebar. There is a screen that pops up with all the websites you can visit in a click of a button. To add your favorite website into the Awesomebar just drag and drop the link from the address bar. It will be added automatically.
• The pop up bubble is another great feature. Just highlight any text and bubble pops up with symbols of Google, Twitter, Wikipedia. Click on the symbol and a page opens after searching with the relevant service.
• Finally just start typing in your address bar and search results are shown in the address bar drop down itself. No need for search engine page to load hence saving me time.

Try out Smarter Fox and let me know if you liked it through your comments.

Link: Download Smarter Fox

Recently I visited the AdSense for feeds blog of google & I found that now it even easier to configure their blogs to work with FeedBurner and AdSense for Feeds, with just a few clicks, are able to do both at the same time.

To set this up, go to Blogger and select the blog you wish to monetize on your Blogger Dashboard, and select “Monetize.” This will give you some basic options for configuring ads, and if you already have connected your Blogger feed to FeedBurner, will confirm that the proper feed is being configured. AdSense for feeds will automatically pick the right ad sizes for your users, content, and end medium.

After setup, you will be able to view your AdSense reports (including feed revenue) directly from the Blogger Dashboard, as well as from your AdSense account. Additional feed management options for your feed and feed analytics will be available from http://feedburner.google.com.

Source : Adsense for Feeds Blog

Hey ! Just what we needed. In its endless efforts to make the life easier for webmasters, Google has now understood that indexing RSS feeds and Atoms could be yet another value addition to their arsenal of indexing tools.

Google generally would use incoming links, sitemaps, etc to index new files and websites, and with  this new addition newer websites won’t find it hard to get indexed on Google. All you need to do is set up your RSS/Atom feed and as an added measure make sure your Robots.txt file doesn’t block it.

In my opinion this feature had been in practice for quite some time, but its only now that Google announced it officially.

Anyways, all good for webmasters.

Via : Google Webmaster Central Blog

Yahoo! Meme is the new micro-blogging service from Yahoo is now open to all. I decided to check out what was all the fuss was about and came away with mixed feelings.

I liked its layout even though it felt a bit like Twitter, the idea of sharing videos, images and audio seems to be novel and as far as options go, makes it more versatile than Twitter.

Yahoo Meme

• The layout is very similar to Twitter. But you can share images from your desktop, post mp3 links for audio and share videos from YouTube or Vimeo.
• The concept of ReTweet becomes Repost which is something they have clearly borrowed from Twitter. There is also Popular section which shows the post which has been reposted the most number of times.
• Something they borrowed from Facebook was the option to comment on other peoples posts.
• Yahoo Meme takes a different path from Twitter when it comes to the number of characters you can enter. At Twitter its 140 with a focus on updates from mobile phones and with Yahoo Meme the limit is 2000 characters.

So now you have a social networking site which has borrowed somethings from Twitter and Facebook. It seems to be confused on who it wants to challenge or what exactly it wants to give internet users. It surely does not have anything really different from other websites for people to actively want to be a part of Yahoo Meme. It still is early days but at the moment it just looks like Yahoo Meme is a clone of Twitter without the high number of users.

Can’t wait anymore to get the ultimate Google product, the Chrome OS, on your PC? Wait no more. Built from SUSE Studios, the Chrome OS Linux basically is a light install of SUSE Linux containing the latest developer build of Chrome for Linux. Although not the official launch from Google, the unofficial Chrome OS Linux project aims at giving users a feel of what they can expect once Chrome OS is released.

The OS can be installed to your hard-drive like any other OS or you can run it inside Virtual Box or VMware.

Some screen-shots:

Featured software in Chrome OS:

• GNOME 2.24 desktop environment
• Google Chrome 4.0.220 web browser
• OpenOffice.org 3.0 office suite
• GIMP 2.6 image editor
• Flash Player 10.0 plugin
• and much more!

• Processor: Intel Pentium, Xeon or newer; AMD Duron, Athlon, Sempron, Opteron or newer
• RAM: min. 256 MB
• Hard disk: min. 1 GB
• Graphics card: supports most modern graphics cards

You can download the Chrome OS from the official site at https://sites.google.com/site/chromeoslinux/home. [via labnol]

Courier is a real device, and we’ve heard that it’s in the “late prototype” stage of development. It’s not a tablet, it’s a booklet. The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. They’re connected by a hinge that holds a single iPhone-esque home button. Statuses, like wireless signal and battery life, are displayed along the rim of one of the screens. On the back cover is a camera, and it might charge through an inductive pad, like the Palm Touchstone charging dock for Pre.

Until recently, it was a skunkworks project deep inside Microsoft, only known to the few engineers and executives working on it—Microsoft’s brightest, like Entertainment & Devices tech chief and user-experience wizard J. Allard, who’s spearheading the project. Currently, Courier appears to be at a stage where Microsoft is developing the user experience and showing design concepts to outside agencies.

The Courier user experience presented here is almost the exact opposite of what everyone expects the Apple tablet to be, a kung fu eagle claw to Apple’s tiger style. It’s complex: Two screens, a mashup of a pen-dominated interface with several types of multitouch finger gestures, and multiple graphically complex themes, modes and applications. (Our favorite UI bit? The hinge doubles as a “pocket” to hold items you want move from one page to another.) Microsoft’s tablet heritage is digital ink-oriented, and this interface, while unlike anything we’ve seen before, clearly draws from that, its work with the Surface touch computer and even the Zune HD.

For an animated demonstration of this, look here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg7853cTtD8

Windows 7, the next and most updated operating system for home PC’s is getting closer to release on October 22nd. Coming with new improvements, upgrades and an eye pleasing new “glass” look, the OS should please owners of both powerful and underpowered machines alike.

Any student with a valid student email address are eligible to get a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional, 32-bit or 64-bit for only a mere $30. The student will have the choice on which version they get, because presumably students with weaker net-books may want a less demanding version (but less features).

Windows aren’t the only ones being generous, with apple offering their new operating system “Snow Leopard” for $29, beating Microsoft’s Windows 7 price by $1.

Windows 7 Logo

This offer will continue until January 3, 2010 at 12 a.m. CST. So you should, if you’re a student have plenty of time to pick up a copy as this offer is way to sweet to give up. The deal is found on the win741.com site, a recently launched site from Microsoft.

This move seems like a smart one by Microsoft, considering apple have beat Microsoft (Home Premium (upgrade) retailing for $120 and $200 for a Professional upgrade) on the standard prices with Snow Leopard. ($29).

Shaving some size and weight off the average GPS handheld or foldable map, MAPTOR, designed by Jin-Sun Park and Seon-keun Park, displays your maps via a pico projector no larger than a tiny flashlight. The concept includes a built-in GPS receiver that provides you with a little red dot of your location, so that you can quickly get your bearings. The device is designed to fit in a pocket or be worn on a lanyard. Pull it out, aim your map onto a nearby surface, whether it be your hand or a wall, adjust the map dimensions and zoom with the flick of a button, and get your directions in seconds. Since it’s only a concept, you won’t have to actually decide, but would you buy a standalone device like this or wait for technology to be built into a smartphone with projector? It’s certainly an innovative, useful idea, but seems like it might duplicate what you already get elsewhere without adding enough to justify the extra money.[via Walyou]