Tech Me Out

Breaking into someones voice mail

2012-01-12T20:04:00.001-05:00

So you want to be a nosing person. And invade peoples privacy by listening to someone elses voice mails. In this blog I will tell you the easiest way to do it. However I won't tell you how to avoid going to jail for doing it. And I say this right now, I'm giving you this information because I can. I'm not forcing you to do it, and I recommend that if you don't have the persons permission to not do it.

So now lets get started.
First you will need a few things.
You will need a phone. When I did this I did on a rooted Samsung Prevail. But most any other phone should work.
You will also need SpoofCard (SpoofCard offers an app for supported phones, currently iPhone, Blackberry & Android)
$10.00 USD to waste on Spoof Credits
Ah and the most important thing you'll need is fully functional brain. I'm not joking. Without a working brain you may do something stupid such as doing it without your victims approval. Then if they find out you will feel just as stupid.

Now Spoof Card up until about 2 years ago used to be legal in the US. What it does is makes the process of spoofing a caller ID (Orange Boxing) easy without the need of expensive switch board systems.

Now say we want to listen to Joe Smo's messages. We will need to first know his phone number. Then we will use spoof card to call his number and to make his caller ID display his own number.

Now Joe's phone will ring & if he is like 65% of people in America he trust caller ID and will be very confused at what is going on with his phone.

Joe will have two choices answer it or ignore it. If he ignores it the voicemail will pickup. The voicemail service will think Joe is calling himself. And when this happens it will direct you to Joe's Voicemail.

If Joe is smart he would make sure that no matter what you have to type a pin to access the voice mail. But most people in the US are lazy and set the pin but make it so they don't have to enter it every time. Because of this we will be able to listen to Joe's messages. We will have able to all the control Joe has on his voicemail.

Like I said earlier Spoof Card is simply a tool to Orange Box. Since the tool takes all of the labor of learning how to Orange Box you have to pay for the time you use on it.

Such methods as what I have mentioned above have been used by rogue private eyes, for the past 15 years.

The best luck they have had with such methods is finding out when the least expected time is for the victim to pick up the ringing phone.

Ways to protect yourself
Well first of all never take a caller ID for granted. Operators have switch boards and telemarketers have them as well as alot of other businesses. All it takes is a pissed off person with enough knowledge to modify the switchboard to spoof the caller ID. Another thing to do to protect yourself is to make sure you are required to enter a pin number when you listen to your voice mail. This will require the attacker to use cracking techniques. Such as Brute forcing the pin with a DTMF or LATA pin generator.
The safest way to protect yourself is to never give your phone number out. Instead you could give a calling card that plays the proper DTMF or LATA tones. This way if people need to call you they place the card to the phones mic and they can call you. However the best way to protect yourself is to just know that no matter what thirds always a possibility and knowing this you would have to work extremely hard not to get on someones bad side.

Tips & Tricks for Samsung Prevail

2011-12-06T04:45:00.001-05:00

Okay here are some tips and tricks for the Samsung Galaxy Prevail. Since some people choose not to root there phones. I've split this blog post into two parts. The first part will be for both non rooted users & rooted users. The second part will be just for rooted users

Non Rooted Tips & Trick

Storage Saving Tricks

The internal storage of the Prevail is rediculously small. This has annoyed me since day one. You end up only installing a few apps and because you surf the web make calls and send text messages you still end up getting the dreaded message telling you that your short on storage. At this point most average users will do the following.

Clear Call Logs
Clear Text Messages
Clear App Caches
And in rare cases they will uninstall apps (Not usually recommended for updated Apps such as Google Maps & GMail, because updates are usually issued to help make the app more stable and secure, even safer to use)

Since the Prevail Ships with Android 2.2 which has the ability to move apps to the SD Card you can do just that by going to Settings > Applications > Manage Applications and choosing which apps to move to the SD Card. Keep in mind not all apps can be moved.

Once enough space has been freed you can save yourself the trouble of checking the app to see if it can be moved then moving it to the SD Card. By simply installing Apps 2 SD. This will notify you each time an app is installed that can be moved to the SD Card.

If your not Rooted you may have gotten a message recently that tells you that a System Update is Availible. This is fairly large file named update.zip that gets downloaded to the cache partition of your phone. Your then required to restart your phone. When you restart your phone you will be brought into the recovery console where you can upgrade to android 2.3.

With the 2.3 upgrade you can tell android to install to the sdcard by default.
Keep in mind that moving an app to the sdcard has certain things to worry about. Like the fact that the sdcard can read and write data hence you can delete or corrupt your app.

Another thing is that just because the app is on the sdcard doesn't mean it's dependencies are on the sdcard. Apps usually store other have data and cache that gets stored on the phones internal memory. So moving the apps to the SD Card can help a little.

Installing non Market Apps

You may spend your time looking for just free apps on the market. You may have seen paid apps that you'd like to have but aren't willing to pay for them. Well the great thing about android is the ability to use 3rd part markets. Plus you can install Android apps from anywhere that you can get them.

Simply go to Settings > Applications

And check the box in the section that says Unknown Sources. Once you have done this you won't just be restricted to installing from the market. Next you can install the Amazon AppStore where you can get 1 paid app for free every day.

Installing Adobe Flash

With the release of Android 2.2 you can start using Adobe Flash. However the installer for the Adobe Flash app limits you to only installing it on an ARMv11 CPU. Since the Prevail has an ARMv6 you can't just install it. Now I must say as a software developer I'm against the idea of piracy. However since the Adobe Flash app is already free I don't really see a problem with what I'm going to tell you. There is a hacked version of Flash that has removed the limitations of the installer. I was unable to install the hacked Adobe Flash 10.1 but had no problem installing the 10.2 hacked version. After you have installed Adobe Flash 10.2 you can install the non hacked 10.3 version with no problems.

Saving Battery Power

You may be very upset when you see how fast your battery dies on your prevail. However I must say that the prevail has very good battery that does have the ability to last long periods of time. The reason the prevail may be draining battery life fast is due to what your doing on your phone.

Since Android syncs with your Google Account and you may have other things that are syncing all the time this can use a lot of juice, and drain your battery faster. Even though you will need to have your Google Account Synced, you wont need to have it Synced all the time. You will still be able to receive calls and make calls. Depending on what parts of your Google Account you have Synced you may also be able to see your contacts. I recommend that if your not using a certain feature with Google or you use it but don't plan on ever using it with your phone to not sync that feature. This will make your battery life last a lot longer.

Another thing that may be causing your battery to drain fast is WiFi. Yes I love to use WiFi on my phone as often as I can. However it is kind of pointless to have the WiFi feature enabled on my phone when I'm in an area that doesn't have WiFi. If you disable WiFi when not using WiFi on your phone you can save power as well.

I've noticed that I don't need to have my screens backlight on when I'm inside or when I'm out at night. In fact depending on how dark it is the glare of the backlight on my screen hurts my eyes when I'm in extremely dark areas. The only times I've ever really needed to use the backlight is when I'm outside on a sunny day. So if you don't use the backlight on your screen often you will save power as well.

The same goes for Bluetooth and GPS. If these features are enabled on your phone you will lose power quicker. So when your not using those features simply disable them.

Disabling all of the above features to save power on your phone which is mentioned above can be done in the Settings of your phone. However to save yourself the hassle of always going to the settings on your phone to disable and enable features. You can place the power control Widget on the phones desktop. This Widget ships with most Android ROMs. Once the widget is on the screen you will be able to enable and disable the options with a simple tap of the widget.

Tips for Rooted Users

Storage Saving Tricks

If your running low on storage space I would recommend removing that bloatware. Chances are you don't use some of the apps that shipped with your phone. If this is the case you can remove them using an app called Titanium Backup. Or you can remove them manually by using a file manager such as root explorer and navigating to /system/app/ this is where you will see all of the apps that come with your Android ROM. You can remove them there. Keep in mind that this directory is read only so you will have to enabled it to read and write.

You may have installed installed updates to some apps that you do actually use. Such as the Aneroid Market or the Gmail app. All apps that are installed by the user are stored in the /data/app/ directory. This includes app updates as well.

Because of this the older apps that shipped with your ROM stay in the /system/app/ directory. So to free up more space you can remove them using your preferred file manager (Do Not Use Titanium Backup to remove these apps if you want to still use the newer versions stored in the /data/app directory)

If you do remove these apps because you have the updated ones installed in the /data/app/ directory you will also want to clear the dalvik-cache. Because it will place the removed app back once you turn your phone on again.

To clear the dalvik-cache you will go to /data/dalvik-cache/ and delete all the files in that directory. You will need to reboot your phone immediately after you do this by holding down the power button.

To save even more space on your phone you can place your apps on the sdcard. However knowing that your apps still store other data on your phone you may still have less space. This is where I would recomend 3 other options.

Use a2sd which requires you to have the clockwork mod.
use the link2sd app
use root all 2 SD app

a2sd method

Even when I was using the cyanogen mod I was unable to get a2sd to work on my prevail. Even after hearing numerous stories about it working. If you do get a2sd working on your prevail I know a few people have. It should start to move apps along with their data and caches to the sdcard. Keep in mind that when using a2sd you will need to have you sdcard partitioned. Their are several ways of doing this. If you have the latest clockwork mod you can partition it in the ext2, ext3, ext4 formats which are needed for the a2sd to work.

You can also get more control of a2sd when you install a Terminal Emulator. When you have the terminal emulator installed you will be able to type commands to move other types of data to the SD Card.

link2sd method

This is the method that I recommend. Not only that but back when a2sd was in development the developer came accrossed the script that link2sd uses and used it for a2sd. So the above a2sd may be recommended by most people but this app works for me and it uses the same script that a2sd uses. This app also requires you to have partitioned SD Card. However this App allows you to format the SD Card in the following formats.

ext2
ext3
ext4
fat32

What is great about link2sd supporting the fat32 file system is that Windows user can easily partition the SD Card without having to install the clockwork mod or using a live Linux CD.

However I would recomend formatting it in an ext format since ext is a native format to Linux which is what Android is built off of. I was unable to use the ext4 format when partitioning my SD Card for use on the Android 2.2 ROM, even when using the ShabbyMod and the Bennix Mobile Mod which is built off of the Shabby Mod ROM. So I used the ext2 format option.

However recently I switched to the Cyanogen Mod ROM which uses Android 2.3, when switching to this ROM I was able to partition my SD Card with the ext4 format. With that ROM you can use the Clockwork Mod to partition your SD Card I however put my SD Card in my Fedora computer and fired up gparted, and partitioned it that way.

Once you've partitioned your SD Card Link2SD is ready to be used. What it does is moves the apps and all of their dependencies to the SD Card. It then places Symbolic Links in the locations that files are stored in. It can do the same for the Dalvik Cache as well.

Knowing this allows you to move other data to the SD Card as well. You wont have to worry to much about the SD Card not mounting on time. Because the Link2SD Script mounts the SD Card on boot. Plus if your SD Card is partitioned in an ext partition Android will mount it automatically. The script doesn't just restrict you to the options that you see in the Link2SD app. So feel free to move and make Sym Links to other files as well.

I ended up moving the following to my SD Card. without a problem.

/system/media/audio/ (I moved these files to a directory called /media stored on my fat32 partiton of my sd card)
/system/app/alot of my apps (I move most of my apps to the ext4 partition of my sdcard. Then made sym links back to the location)
/system/fonts/ (I move the fonts to the ext4 partition of my sdcard and created sym links for all my fonts)

Remember if you have the Clockwork Mod to always make backups of your system before messing around.

root all 2 SD method

This app is extremely risky to use. Use at your own risk the developer tells you before you install it. This app doesn't require to to partition your SD Card but does what Link2SD and a2sd do. The way this works is it creates a virtual partition on the existing SD Card. Which then can have files that you choose to be placed on that partition. However this app doesn't make a mount script so it wont mount the image until later. This can result in bricking your phone if you move the wrong files to your SD Card.

Saving Battery Power for Root Users

A lot of people say that you can't over clock the prevail. I don't know how true this is. I have an over clocking app on my phone. I don't think it actually over clocks my cpu. However I use it to save power when I need to save power. The name of the app is SetCPU. So what I do with SetCPU is I create multiple profiles. I have set my CPU to work in perfomance mode and to never go below 320MHz during a phone call. This assures me that I get the best performance when talking on my phone.

When my phones screen is truned off I have my CPU set to never go above 480MHz and I have the CPU set to powersave mode. This way it uses less power.

RIP Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T09:01:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the day stylish technology died many believe. Yes it is true Steve Jobs died, but he lives on as long as we use his products. As long as people speak his name and build things that where inspired by him he will always live on.

Legends don't die just because the person dies. And we all need someone to look up to like many of us looked up to Steve Jobs. We need someone to kick us in the ass and tell us this is what I did now make it better.

This is how the evolution in technology works. Someone creates a revolutionary product that changes our lives. And it constantly gets better as people learn from such creations and build their own variations. Which could in turn throw the previous creation under the water and become the new revolution.

Without people like Steve Jobs technology evolution would cease to exist. Lets look at the short yet colourful history of our technology. Years ago computers were huge, and cell phones where not even around. But these hulking giants inspired thousands of people to make such things. Eventually computers got smaller. People who loved tinkering with phone lines known as Phreaks where started improving upon Bells creation. Others started improving upon the ARPANET, and others kept improving upon computers. Then things started to all mesh together into one big blur.

Which will still become more revolutionary as time goes on. Because a generation is born every 12 years. And they get inspired but their surroundings which plants seeds for better technology.

The same goes for anything and everything that gets improved upon. Even the food we eat the cloths we wear, the furniture we use the pots we piss in. Theirs enough room for improvement for everything in life to be the next Steve Jobs. Just take your lifes passions and go wild.

Rest In Peace Steve. You will be in all of our hearts.

My Fun Android Experience

2011-07-25T23:21:00.005-05:00

The other day I got my first Android Phone. It was the Samsung Galaxy Prevail for Boost Mobile. Okay well it was more like 2 weeks ago. Either way I've been playing around with it ever since.

First thing that I did was obvious. I called Boost Mobile to get it activated. Since I already had a number from them I wanted to get it transferee over to my new phone. Normally this is all automated, however for this particular phone that service wasn't yet available. So I ended up talking to live person. The process would have been simple, but I didn't rtfm first. But after about 30 minutes of talking to the person at Boost Mobile I was all set up.

Next thing I wanted to do was sync my Google account to it. Once I did the most of my contacts in my GMail address showed up on my phone. This was a real life saver since I didn't have to really enter all of my contacts from my old phone into my new one. That is one of the advantages of cloud computing.

i have more then one Google account so I went to sync my other accounts as well.

Next I went to install some apps from the market place, which is the equivalent to Apples app store.

Since android is built off of Linux I tried to gain root privileges. To my surprise I didn't have root. I wandered why I couldn't get root on my own device. But now that I think about it, it makes sense. After all it protects both phone users and Boost Mobile. But I knew what I was doing so I decided to root my phone.

Rooting it was easy. And if your a Windows user it becomes even easier with the one click root tool.

Now that my phone was rooted I had complete control over it. The main reason I wanted root was so I could wirelessly tether my laptop to it. Which required root privileges. I soon discovered how little internal memory my phone has. To free up memory I moved all of my apparently that I installed over to my SD card. After doing a bit of research I found out about android malware. I quickly installed the AVG apparently. But soon removed it since it was telling me that my Alps that required root access where maleare. I knew these apparently weren't malware. So I decided to try lookout mobile security. This worked a lot better with my rooted phone.

The first apparently that I busted my wallet out for was Titanium backup pro. This aloud me to remove Alps that came with my phone. This freed up quite a bit of internal memory.

I was pleased to find out that google allows 3rd party markets. They have no problem with 3rd party markets. I couldn't find Firefox mobile so I Google's it. I soon found it but it wasn't compatible with my phone. So I installed Opera Mobile.

phone I had no problems removing the toppling preinstalled Alps on my phone.

Default web browser
google talk
Think free office
Hookt
Svgr
Poynt
TeleNav
music player
Live wallpapers
setup wizard
home screen tips
Layer
Launcher (I installed ADW in place of launcher)
Twidroid

I soon came to the conclusion that with my rooted phone I could do all the work I need to do on my computer strait from my phone. It is a great alternative to a computer if I need to use one and don't have one on hand.

Some Apps I installed where

Google Docs. I used this so I could write from my phone then access my work on my google account on another computer.
AndroidVNC
adobe PDF reader
Pdf converter
twitter
Myspace
Facebook
Blogger
PayPal
And a shit load more.

I haven't yet installed arm Alps such h as Ubuntu Linux packages. Mostly because my SD card isn't that big.

All and all I'm loving my android phone much more the Apple iPhone. I've found a lot
more things to do with my android. That makes me feel like the iPhone is just a toy.

I will definitely write more about my android when I get a bigger SD card and install Linux on it.

Windows OS Versions (programmer tips)

2011-05-14T10:44:00.002-05:00

Even though I vary rarely use Windows any more. I still get jobs from various people that request me to build a Windows program. One request that I got recently required the program to run differently depending on which version of Windows the program was installed on.

This left quite a few options opened.

Build the same program multiple times for different Windows versions (this would be an okay solution but then the user has to know which version of the program they need. Plus they may think one is better then the other. This could damage the marketing of the program.)

If you did decide to build multiple versions of the program you could place them into single installer, then have the installer ask the user which Windows version they are using. But still this isn't completely full proof.

Another option is to find files that specific to certain Windows OSes. This is the route I thought would have been best.

This particular program that was being made was for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 systems. It dealt with certain directories in the systems.

For example.
Windows XP's users profile is the following directory. C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\
Windows Vista's and Windows 7's users profile is looks like the following. C:\Users\User Name

Now I could use Envirment Variables. But Windows XP use the My Documents directory, and Windows Vista and 7 use the Documents directory. And this was important. So envirnment variables was the only thing I needed to use.

I started out writing an If statement that looked like the following.

If %userprofile%\My Documents Exist Then
Run some commands.
Else If &userprofile%\Documents Exist Then
Run some other commands

The above sudo code would work for some cases. But not for this particular program. So I took the same idea and decided to make my program read registry values.

So I backed up the Windows Registry and then studied it. I found the registry Key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

In here I found the Windows Version names and numbers. Since for each version number their can be several names I decided to use the numbers. So made my program detect the currentversion value.

If I wanted my program to be more specific such as make it work differently for Windows Vista Ultimate and Windows Vista Basic I would choose the product name value instead.

I hope this info comes in handy for fellow programmers.

Windows 98SE on New Hardware

2010-10-07T14:42:00.003-05:00

Okay so my brother wanted to play some of those old Windows Games that where made for Microsucks Winblows 98. The problem is he uses Apple Computers. And I use PC's that have modern hardware that don't support M$ Winblows 98.

I remember those days of Windows 98. In fact I still have the orginal CD's for Win98, Win98SE and of course Win95. I also had some of the original games that would work on it. This is good for me since I hate to pirate crap. But how am I going to get Windows 98 to work on an Apple.

The answer is obvous but not simple. Use VirtualBox. Yeah you can install pretty much any OS as Guest inside of VirtualBox. However VirtualBox has issues with certain OSes.

VirtualBox requires OSes to run in 32bit True Color Resulution. Windows 98 only runs in 256 High Color Resulutions. Windows 98 will install as Guest inside of VirtualBox with only 256 Color Resolution but it will keep crashing.

VirtualBox requires OSes that support ACPI support. Windows 98 supports this but has trouble reconizing VirtualBox's Emulated BIOS. Because of this if you do default install of Windows 98 it wont use ACPI support. So yes you will be able to install Windows 98 inside of VirtualBox without ACPI support but it will be extremely slow.

Windows 98 doesn't support RAM that is higher then 512MB.

Lastly the VBox Guest Additions don't work in a FAT FS. And since Windows 9.x Systems use Fat Filesystems you won't be able to use them.

So what we will need to do a stable install of Windows 98 inside of VirtualBox is the following.

Make an ISO image of the Windows 98 CD. I was using Linux so used K3B to do this.
Next we will need to modify the ISO image and add custom Video Drivers to the ISO image.
We will need to download and install the Latest Version of VirtualBox
We will need to make Windows 98 Virtual Machine with Virtual Box (Windows 98 doesn't support large HDD's so made a Dynamically Expanding VM that was 4GB in size)
After the VM has been made we will want to change some of the default settings of it. (Change the sound to be SoundBlaster 16bit audio, Change the Network Adapter to PCnet-PCI 2)
Next we will install the modified Windows 98 ISO image onto the VM.
After the installation we will navigate into the C drive of the VM and copy all of the contents of the modified ISO image into a directory in the C Drive.
Next we will reinstall Windows 98
After that we will install the custom video drivers.
Then We will configure the custom video drivers
We will restart and we should be ready.

So lets get started. We will first gather everything we will need. Lets get our Windows 98 CD and place it on the geek table. And we will fire up our web browser and download the custom video drivers. I would recomend the VBEMP drivers by Bear Windows. You can get them at http://bearwindows.boot-land.net/vbe9x.htm or you can make your own drivers like I did. But I will assume your using VBEMP drivers.

Here is the direct Download Link for the drivers

We will need to have cd burning program. For Linux users I would recomend K3B. If your using Debian based Linux System you can download it and install it by typing sudo apt-get install k3b

Or you can download and install it here

Next we will get the latest version of VirtualBox. You can get it from http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads (Try not to use the OSE versions)

Direct download link for VirtualBox for Windows user can be found here
Direct download link for Apple users can be found here

If your using Debian based Linux System such as Ubuntu you may want to add the PEUL repo for VirtualBox and install using apt-get. A good how to can be found on virtualbox.org at http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads

We now need to get an ISO Image editor. For debian based Linux users I would recomend ISO Master. To install ISO Master type sudo apt-get install isomaster or you can download and install it here

For Windows users I don't know of any free ISO Editors but you can buy Magic ISO Maker or you may be able to get away with just using the trial version of it which can be gotten here.

Now that we have everything on our computer we can start hacking away. You can start by popping in that ugly Windows 98 CD into your Optical Drive and opening up your burning program.

For Linux users choose to copy medium with K3B. And in the Window that pops up check the box that says Only Create ISO Image. Then choose the location that you want to save the ISO image to. Then We will click the start option. I'm not entirely sure how to do this in Infra Recorder but I'm sure it is pretty simple to figure out.

After the image has been made extract the Display drivers from the zip file that you downloaded from the Bear Windows website. Then look for the directory called UNI. It should be in the VBE9X directory. Now we will add the UNI directory to our ISO Image. To do this we will open up our ISO Image editor and navigate to the DRIVERS\DISPLAY\ directory of your ISO image. We will now add the UNI directory to that directory. We will then recreate the ISO with our ISO Image editor.

The new ISO image that we just made is our modified Windows 98 ISO image that we will use with VirtualBox. So now we will fire up Virtual Box and create our Virtual Machine Image. When VirtualBox is fired up we will click the button that says New. It will then walk you threw the process of making the Virtual Machine. Once the Virtual Machine has been made right click on it and choose Settings. A new window will pop up. Now we will click on the Audio Option which should be on the left hand side of the window. And we will make our Audio controller SoundBlaster 16. Next we will find the Network Option on the left hand side of the window. Usually it is directly under the Audio option. We will click the Network Option and we will make sure the Network Adapter is enabled. We will then click the advanced option and change the Adapter type to PCnet-PCI II. Now we will go over to the Storage Option on the left hand side of the Window and load the ISO Image. Click on the word that says Empty and then to the right where it says CD/DVD Device click on the folder icon. Then located the custom Windows 98 ISO image and load it into Virtual Box. Now close the window out and click on the Windows 98 Virtual Machine. It will then start installing Windows 98.

After Windows 98 has been installed load the ISO image into the Virtual Machine. Then navigate to the C: drive and make a new folder called win98. Open the folder up and then copy all the contents from the ISO image into the folder. Once all the content has been loaded restart Windows 98 in DOS. Now we will navigate to the win98 directory. To do this we will type cd .. (Don't forget the 2 periods) This will bring the prompt to something that looks like C:> if it looks something like that then we will type cd win98. The prompt should look like C:\win98>. If it does then we will type setup /pj. This will start the installation of Windows 98 all over again. The /pj forces ACPI to be installed.

After Windows 98 has been reinstalled the second time. We will need to install the VBEMP drivers. Make sure the ISO image is loaded into the Virtual Machine when you Start Windows 98. Then right click on My Computer and select Properties. When the new window pops up select the tab that says Device Manager. Then select the Display Adapter option. Then right click on the driver and choose remove. This will remove the current driver. And Windows 98 should recognize new hardware. If it doesn't then restart and it should recognize the new hardware after it restarts.

When it recognizes the new hardware choose to install from the CD. Then select the VBEMP driver. When the VBEMP driver is done installing restart your Virtual Machine again. Then right click any where on the desktop and choose Properties. In the new window select the Settings Tab. Now choose the True Color 32-bit option. Next the screen size to a bigger size. After you are happy with the changes click Apply to save the changes. Restart your Virtual Machine again and you should be done.

Google Voice

2010-09-22T21:53:00.002-05:00

Okay so I've been hearing so much about Google Voice. When tried getting it earlier, I had to be invited. However I couldn't find someone to invite me. Finally it became available to everyone. I signed up.

When signed up it asked me for my area code or my zip code or my city. I chose my area code. Mostly because my city is in more then one location. I wanted to make sure I got the right location.

Then had to pick a word for my Google Voice Number. I tried several combos. All of which where taken. I was like what the heck. These words are never taken when I sign up to sites. I then chose 4 letter word. It was availible. I am now under the impression that my word was supposed to be 4 letters only. If I knew this would have made better 4 letter word. However the 4 letter word still means something to me. I guess I could of made 4 letter word that means a little more to me.

Anyhow I then got to add a my phone number to it. This was nice. Because now it acts as number that forwards over to the number. Kind of like those 800 numbers. You know you get an 800 number and it forward to your regular phone number. But what thought was nice was I could add my cell phone number, home number, Skype number, work number fax number and yada yada. So now instead of managing all of those numbers I only have to worry about single number.

Google then displays a 2 digit number on your computer screen. This is followed by you getting phone call asking you to enter your 2 digit verification code. This is the 2 digit number displayed on your screen. I can see why they would do this, this is to prevent number hijacking.

Another nice thing is the ability to send text messages and it supports voice. I can make phones from my computer. Think of Skype on crack. I can manage all of my contacts and everything from it.

When I manage my contacts I get list of contacts that I've added to my GMail Account that I can add to my Google Voice number as contact. It also displays all the people I've emailed on GMail account. I can then add those people as well. Not only this but you can import contactss that you have stored on your computer. I'm not sure what formats are supported yet for the uploadinh option mostly because I haven't tried it. But my guess is it will most likely be cvs format.

I'm not sure if you can sync your cell phone contacts and skype contacts onto Google Voice but if you can't this would be nice little feature. In short their seems to be so much you can do with it. It is really handy tool to not only manage all of your phone numbers, contacts, and such. But an all in contact management tool/ I've just read some stuff about adding Google voice to Pidgin. This will be nice as well. This way instead of my opening up web browser to use it I will be able to use it with program that is always running on my computer.

In shorts I think it is really nice to have. However I think they need to add better instructions on signing up to it.

Rescuing Broken Filesystem (Ubuntu 10.04)

2010-09-17T21:38:00.003-05:00

Okay so I did something wrong when using Ubuntu. Don't ask me what I was doing hundred things at the same time and it could of been one of those things or mix of few things. Either way borked my nice Ubuntu 10.04 machine that I spent hours tweaking and customizing. I didn't realize I did anything wrong until rebooted.

When I rebooted instead of seeing my UPower Splash Screen I saw some scrolling text. You now the type that Newbies get really scared of. I thought ah not a big deal as long as it boots. Then I saw the famous (INITRAMFS) scroll up the screen. This was followed by some more text that list my devices on my computer. Then it just stayed that way.

I tried rebooting several times expecting different result. I know I'm insane like that. But I got the same result 3 times. Since I never install Ubuntu with the LiveCD and I usually use the Alternate installer because I can be more flexible with it. I only had the Alternate Install Disk. I hopped on to my Laptop of mine and got ready to download the LiveCD to make my rescue much easier. Why I was waiting for my LiveCD ISO image to download I decided to pop in the Alternate Install CD knowing that it has a Rescue Broken System Option.

I chose check Disk for Defects to make sure the CD was not corrupt. Everything Checked out. So I decided to reboot back into the Alternate Install CD and choose the Rescue option. So I did just that.

I then got to a screen that asked me if I wanted to boot from the shell, reinstall the grub bootloader, reboot my system and 2 other options that I can't remember. Run the shell. After this I was asked what device my root filesystem was on. Their where 3 options. sda1, sda2 and sda5. I had no idea but took an educated guess and chose sda1. Then I got sent to the shell as root user.

From here typed the good old fsck -t ext4 /dev/sda1 command. This command tells the system to check and repair any problems in filesystem. Of course I knew that Ubuntu 10.04 installs on an ext4 filesystem. If it was on an ext3 or ext2 filesystem I would have typed the following.

fsck -t ext3 /dev/sda1

You could do this for fat filesystems also if your using one such as Windows. Of course sda1 would also be different if Ubuntu was installed on different drive. But since I believed it the root filesystem was installed on sda1 and was correct I decided to use that and it turned out I was right.

After I issued the commands I typed reboot. Since I was in the shell as a root user I didn't need to use sudo reboot just reboot. Then I the Live CD started once again. I then chose to boot from Hard Disk. When I did this I saw the UPower screen yippy. It was running check on the system and making sure everything was fine. Then my System Started up just fine. To make everything was perfect from their on out I decided to reboot my system once again. After I did this the system started just fine. I didn't have to wait for UPower to run check on the System.

One of the most rewarding things is to rescue system that you have spent hours working on and you really don't want to have to do it over again.

Making Slim Ubuntu Linux System

2010-07-15T02:42:00.003-05:00

Okay so I love Ubuntu Linux for the ease of use of it. It's powerful enough for advanced users and easy enough for you 90 year old grandma who just barely knows how to check emails. However if your like me you may feel Ubuntu is kind of bloated. If that is the case you can build a slim Ubuntu machine that does everything you need it to do.

After I've done this quite few times I ended up making an Ubuntu Remix called Bennix. Feel free to do the same.

What you will need:

A computer with the at least

300 MHz x86 processor

128 MB RAM

1 GB of disk space

Graphics card and monitor capable of 640x480

An Ubuntu Alternate Installation Disk
And for the people who don't know the obvious you will need a power outlet that has electricity in it. Make sure you test it by sticking your fingures in it (If you really do this then you shouldn't read any further)

Tips:
If the computer that you install Ubuntu on doesn't have an optical drive you can do one of the following.

Make an Ubuntu USB Flash drive with Ubuntu USB Key Creator or if your using Windows you may want to try UNetBootIn
Do a net boot. In order to do this your computer will need to support eitherboot. Most new computers offer this.
If it has an Optical drive but you can't boot off of it you may want to try Smart Boot Manager. Put it on floppy disk or USB or what ever. I've even used Grub4Dos and Grub2 to to boot it.
Or you can try Super Grub Disk

When the CD starts up, select your language. I usually select English because they don't offer a Binary option. After you've selected your language you will want to press F4 and select command line install. Or depending on your version it may say mininal install. After this use your arrow keys to select install system. Then press ENTER.

You may notice that the Alternate CD doesn't use Ubuiquity and has an ugly blue screen like the Windows XP installation. This is normal. Follow the steps and finnish the installation.

Once the installation has been finnished, restart your computer and you will see some text that ask for your log in info. Enter your user name press ENTER then type you Password and press ENTER. Now that your logged in you may want to update your system. To do this issue the following commandss. Feel free to copy and paste the commands.

sudo apt-get update

then

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

After the above commands you should see alot of scrolling text. If it ask you to press Y or N then press Y. You will also need to enter your password since your using root priviledges.

Now it may be nice to have a Desktop Envirnment. Their are plenty to choose from. Depending on which one you will want you will have to issue different commands.

To install the Gnome envirnment you will want to issue the following commands.

sudo apt-get install gnome-core

If you want an even lighter gnome envirnment you may want to install each part of gnome seperately.

If you want the KDE Desktop Envirment you may want to issue the following commands.

sudo apt-get install kde-minimal

If you want very light weight envirnment that resembles Windows you may want to use ICEWM. You can issue the following commands to install it.

sudo aptitude install icewm iceconf icepref iceme

Note I had some problems installing with apt-get

If you want the xfce Desktop envirnment you may want to try the following commands.

sudo apt-get install xfce4

Or you may want to try Flux Box. To install Flux Box you may want to issue the following commands.

sudo aptitude install fluxbox fluxconf

Before you restart your computer you will need to install a login manager. You can use anyone you want even though they where meant for certain WM's.

To install GDM which gnome uses you may want to issue the following commands.

sudo apt-get install gdm

To install KDM which is for KDE you may want to issue the following commands

sudo apt-get install kdm

or you may want lighter Login managers such as XDM or Slim

sudo apt-get install xdm

or

sudo apt-get install slim

You can now restart your computer by issuing the following commands.

sudo reboot

When your computer restarts you will see nice GUI. However you may want to add some nice themes and screen savers. To do this you can install them depending on your WM. In the below example I'm using gnome.

sudo apt-get install gnome-themes gnome-screensaver

You may also want to install nice package manager, update manager and notifier. To this you may want issue the following commands.

sudo apt-get install gnome-app-install app-install-data-commercial update-manager update-notifier

If your computer needs specail drivers the easiest way to install them is to install jockey. You can install jockey by issuing the following commands.

sudo apt-get install jockey-gtk

Now you may want sound. To get sound on your ubuntu installation you may want to issue the following commands.

sudo apt-get install libasound2 alsa-utils alsa-oss

To setup your printer you may want to issue the following commands.

sudo apt-get install system-config-printer-gnome

For GUI networking program you may want to issue the following commands

sudo apt-get install network-manager-gnome

Keep in mind in order for the network manager to work you will need to disable the terminal network settings. To do this issue the following commands.

sudo nano -w /etc/network/interfaces

This will bring up nano with the following text in it.

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

You will want to remove the last 2 lines. So it will look like the following.

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface

Now you will save it by pressing ctrl + x and then confirming with y

So now you have nice light weight system that doesn't hog alot of resources.

Reporting Unknown Computer Viruses

2010-05-04T14:13:00.003-05:00

I was recently on Facebook and came accrossed an App that required me to download a windows file. I thought the whole thing seemed to be suspicous. But because I was running a Linux distro that I made I didn't fear this to much. I downloaded the file and used clam av to scan for a virus. Well no virus was detected.

My suspicion still was very strong. Could it be that AV's just haven't found out about this file yet. So I ended trying to determine if this file really was malicous. Back in the good old days if I wanted to do this I would have to decompile the virus. This took alot of experience. However life does get easier. Theirs a site called Virus Total that scans files that have malicous things in it. To best explain this. I will say this. Alot of programs use existing programs inside of that program. This is why installers are required when installing Windows program. Because the programs sometimes have 100's of other files that need to be certain locations on the computer. Instead a program writing detailed instructions on where each file needs to be placed. The programmer makes an installer that places all of those files in the correct places. A program in it's self may not be malicous, but the files that the program uses can be. With Virus Total it detects all of these files in that program and checks to see if any of them are malicous.

So I uploaded the file to Virus Total it started to scan it. I then was told that it found two files that where malicous. Bingo good thing I was smart and I was running Unix based machine. So I now knew that this file was in fact bad. I also knew that chances are if one AV doesn't have the file in their Database chances are none of them would. This is because alot of those companies trade information. So I only really needed to report the file to just one company. But I decided to report it to more then one.

I found that reporting such things to be more trivial then it should be. In my opinion the forms I had to fill out should of been in links on the front page of these site. Instead I had to do alot of hunting around.

I uploaded the file to Clam, Synaptic, McAfee, AVG, Kaspersky and TrendMicro. The easiest one to find was clam. The most complicated one was Synaptic. I would have never found the way to report it to synaptic if I didn't get into support chat. And even in that chat it was like talking to moron.

Me: I would like to report malicous file to you guys. I don't believe it is in your databases.
Support: What is the error that Synaptic is giving you?
Me: None I don't have Synaptic installed I'm running a Linux system.
Support: Unfortantly we don't provide support for Linux. If you want to install Synaptic please use Windows.
Me: I have no intention on using your software or Windows. However I'm concerned for users who are using Windows. I want to report this file so you guys can help protect Windows users.
Support: In order for us to give you any information you need to have Synaptic installed on Windows computer.
Me: I don't mean to sound threatening. But your taking big risk. I'm sure you don't want to be investigated by the Attorney Generals office by knowingly not having a malicous file in your databases that could protect people. If a crime is commited and I report it to the police and the police did nothing, then they face going to trial.
Support: Please hold on a second while I redirect you to another agent.
Support2: I understand your having a problem using our product. I will try my best to help solve the problem.

My patients was running low.

Me: I do not use your software. I do not want to use your software. Please give me information on how to report a virus to Synaptic. If you fail to do so, I will report you for illeagal activities.
Support2: No Synaptic stops viruses we don't give viruses. We want to protect you.
Me: If you want to protect me and others then please understand that when I go to you guys to report something that may help you protect others then you should cooperate.

After one more support agent and explaining the issue all over again I finnally got the link. The form was setup as if I knew every little aspect about the virus. As if I made it. In fact it would ask me as if I where the maker of it.

With TrendMicro I had to call them. And since it was weekend no one would answer. But the answering machine gave me instructions on getting support online.

McAfee I also called. The call lasted less then 5 minutes. The person on the phone had deep indian accent and gave me the URL to go to. Yes it was correct. I uploaded the file. Less then 24hrs later I recieved thank you email from them. Telling me that they will put the file in their next update.

I also did who is on the domain name that the app was stored on. I reported the app to the facebook abuse department. Giving the owners info domain name NS info, IP address and more. I didn't get an email back from Facebook for 2 days. Then I recieved thank you email telling me that the app has been removed.

In short I hope that people understand that anti virus companies aren't perfect. And if they are unaware of a threat it doesn't matter what AV you use. You will get infected. If you do get infected I hope you upload all files that you suspect may be the cause to Virus Total. Then report the file to your AV company. Even if it isn't malicous or if they already do have it in their databases, you did the write thing. Because everyone who does report such things ends up helping tons of people.

Google, Topeka or April Fools

2010-04-01T14:16:00.002-05:00

Today is April 1^st and Google has announced that they are changing their name to Topeka. They have written blog on the reasons why they are doing this. The idea is behind the supposed fact that city in Kansas has officailly changed their name to Google. But is this true.

A lie is best told when facts are given with it. It is also best believed when trusted sources tells it. Of course with trusted sources rumors are more easily spread. For example for several years it was strictly rumor that Google was releasing their own Operating System.

Many people who hear about didn't believe it because of what was being said. The things that where being said was that it would be the Web OS. Any true programmer knows that an Operating System can't just be strictly web based. This is because an Operating System has to communicate to hardware which make it extremely difficult to do web based.

The truth is, it is fact that Google is releasing their own Operating System. About 90% of it is web based. Everything is stored on the web. However the main Operating System needs to be installed on the hardware. I don't want to go into the details on the security issues in having an Operating System like this. But tons of them open up.

Most rumours about companies start from individuals who admire the company. In sense they want to see the company do what they are talking about. But their are rare cases when companies will start rumours about themselves for publicity.

Because of the connections I have with Google. And the fact that I have done work for them in the past. I want to believe that I would have heard something about such a change. Since I haven't and the fact remains that the change happened on April Fools day. It is most likely in my opinion that these claims are falsified by Google.

Of course only time will prove me wrong.

Hacking Facebook

2010-01-07T22:59:00.002-05:00

Okay here's the scenario. My brother's girl friend's sisters brother inlaw's son's room mates cousin wife's, neace was having certain problems with some users on facebook. They confronted me about this. I told them to report it to the abuse department. However after receiving no help threw them, or law enforcement, we decided to take matters into our own hands.

Exact nature of problem consist of threats sent to the user. Similar threats where sent to the same user via another profile. It seamed as though a user had set up multiple profiles on facebook. So right then and there if this was the the case the user had already violated terms of service, by setting up multiple profiles. And of course threatening emails also violates these services. So one definite violation of there service definitely happened. And a possible second violation if the to profiles where owned by the same person.

Before I go any further I would like to state that even if both profiles had the same IP address. It could very likely just be 2 users using the same computer to login to their own accounts. If this was the case the violations of terms of service for having multiple profiles wouldn't be violated. Mostly because they where really owned by 2 different people. However if this is the case this would mean that 2 different people violated another part of the terms of service.

Now how are we going to obtain those IP addresses. If you go to any profile on facebook and copy the URL into a Whois search engine you will only get the IP address of the facebook website. Which is pointless. However you can obtain IP addresses from people who have sent emails to to you. What most people never notice is that facebook is pretty much an advanced emailing system. All status updates, friend request, personal messages are emailed to users, to their their person email account. So think of it this way. If you log into mail.aol.com and send me a message to my email address. I will be able to track your personal IP address. Logging into post a status update, news feed, request someone to be a friend or even just sending a message to someone on facebook, is the same thing as logging into your mail.aol.com account to send a message. I would be able to track the IP address in the same manner. The only thing that would need to happen is for me to recieve message in my inbox from you on facebook.

Obvously if you know how to track an IP address from an a senders email then you don't need to read on. Because the following will teach just this and apply it to facebook.

The starting point. To do this you would need to have a basic knowledge of how an email works. And the best way to learn this is by sending messages using the command prompts telnet command. Back in the day it was as simple as connecting to any old SMTP server. Then tell the SMTP server what domain name you are using. If I wanted to send an email to someone and make it look like it was from the address bgates@microsoft.com all I would need to do is tell the SMTP server that I'm microsoft.com. Then I would apply a user name to that domain name. so if I wanted the email to say bgates@microsoft.com I would need to tell it this. Next you would tell the server who to send the email to, followed by typing a message. If you want the username info to appear in the persons message. The from info, the to info, and the subject had to be added in the first 3 lines of the message.

However email companies caught on to this impersonation and took action. First they made it so if you where to send a message on the same machine that your SMTP server was on the message would never arrive to the email account. Later they made it so IP info would also be sent along with the username and password of the sender. Of course doing this opened up the senders for an attack on their account. So email companies would then make the username and password use 64bit hash encryption. What this meant was even if you logged into your account using telnet, you would also need to provide your user name in a hash encryption. If you just entered you username and password telnet wouldn't encrypt it for the for the server. You would need to encrypt it first then send it threw telnet. Obvously this would prove to the server that the telnet user has the rights to use this email address. And of course IP info falls into all of this. And then keep in mind all the user would see up front is the From: To: Subject: and Message. But the user would still be to access that info.

Different Email accounts let you access this information in different way. And accessing this info is legal and vary easy to do. In the file you will see bunch of text. You'll also see what appears to be several IP addresses. Run a whois on each one. You will find out one IP address is yours. Antoher IP address is the servers IP that the user logged into. Another would be the IP address to the server that your email is hosted on. And of course you'll also see the IP address of the computer that the user sent it from.

You'll also see the users username and their password. Both of which should be encrypted, using a 64 bit hash. So in sense you could log into the users account and obtain all of his info, if you decrypt the hash. But the IP address was all that I wanted.

So what ever message you receive from facebook about a user. No matter if it is a status update, friend request, news feed or any other activity that a user post. If it ends up in your email account you'll be able to access that persons IP address. So now you'll need to compare the two IP addresses and see if they match. If they match you know that the message where sent using the same computer.

Certain things to keep in mind are the following. If the user has a dynamic IP address, and the IP address has changed since the time that you recieved the message you will get this info of some other users IP address. However times are list on the email and you could trace it strait back to that user. Another thing to be aware of is the use of proxies. Even thou alot of proxies wont work on facebook there are some that do work. If the person is using a proxy then the IP address could seem to originate from somewhere else. But getting the IP address is still very useful in either case.

I would also like to post the magic facebook email addresses. These are the emails facebook staff use but are extremely hard to find them to send them a message. I would highly recomend reporting any privacy issues to these email addresses.
privacy@facebook.com
appeals@facebook.com
abuse+dwybo1b@facebook.com
abuse+dt17u8y@facebook.com
login@facebook.com
info@facebook.com
disabled@facebook.com

Is Nazzi America Coming To An End

2009-08-20T19:34:00.002-05:00

There is hard evidence out there that Microsoft is currently using XML to make the popular selling product Microsoft Word. It shows that XML coding is being used in there latest release Word known as Word 2007. But obviously Microsoft did exactly what we do when we install a program (click Next then Next then click I Agree followed by another next then finished.) Because if they did read the EULA (End User License) or in XML terms it would be the TOA (Terms Of Agreement) they would have noticed that XML is for Web Based Applications only. Now M$ Word does access the internet, but it is primarily used for use on a PC that it has been installed on. Microsoft may have been able to get away with such a thing if the parts that where written in XML were parts that used the web. Microsoft is currently being forced by the makers of XML to redesign Microsoft Word and other Microsoft Office Applications that use XML in an improper manner.

What does this mean for the general public? There is a strong chance that Microsoft Office will no longer be compatible with previous versions. Hence if a person has Microsoft Office 07 and makes a document in it, there is 90% chance that it will also work under Office 03, XP, 2000 and before. Now that Microsoft is being forced to make some major changes to there Office Suite, any document produced with it now only has about a 48% chance of it working with previous versions. Once more 76% of all businesses use a version of Microsoft Office. Imagine the problems that will arise.

Before we go any further

Please look at these statistics. They are important right now.
70% of all computers have Windows on them (that includes the few Macs that also have it on them)
Out of that 70%, 42% of those computers are for business use.
75% of all software companies make software for Windows.
Out of those software companies 40% of them only make Windows programs

Are You Scared?

Microsoft is taking a hit. And it may be huge. If they don't fix there problem and come up with an easy, acceptable and suitable change for Microsoft Office they are going to lose a lot of business. Now not only that but they have already taken a big hit with Winblows Vista. If Microsoft doesn't create a reasonable product for office use that be just as compatible as the other ones are with each other, then people will be forced to get other office software. This in itself causes a problem, because obviously if all of a companies work is done in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, then your files are only going to compatible with Microsoft Office. And if you where to get Corel's office software, then you would have to literally redo everything to work in Corel, this is time consuming and it's time that most companies won't have and would hate to pay for.

Most people think that Windows is Microsoft number one seller. This is inaccurate. Most people who have Windows didn't buy it, they bought a PC with it already on it. Hence most computers run have an OEM version of Windows, which doesn't have as much value a a retail copy has on it. Office used to ship with some PC's but not all of them. And most of the time it was either a trial version or it was really Microsoft Works (a cheaper and more watered down version of Office). This means that yes Office is Microsoft's money maker. If majority of the public decided to go with another company Microsoft get crippled. Within a few years Microsoft might not even be able to offer Windows anymore dew to the loss they could receive.

Obviously people being forced to find an alternative to Office would cause hist-aria. And if Windows where to be just a thing in the past. This would have a very big impact on the NY Stock Exchange. Imagine thousands of Software companies that build nothing but Windows based programs declaring bankruptcy, or having to make programs for the Mac and Linux community. They'll pretty much have to rewrite all there code fire most of there Windows Programmers, Hire a bunch of Mac and Linux programmers and get new tools and maybe computers. All that cost money and becomes very risky.

But now think of the users. They are the most important in all this. Most of them probably haven't heard of Linux, the ones that have are in the mindset that if it's free it's no good. Many people will probably be thinking heavily on using Mac OSX, but there's a downfall. If they decide to use Mac OSX they will be forced to buy an Apple computer. Hopefully Apple at this time will take Microsoft title at being the computer Nazzi and start making software that works on PCs. Of course there will be those that need there current PCs and can't wait for Apple to release an OS that works for PCs. So they will be forced to use Linux which will then the freedom that the Open Source community has been waiting for will skyrocket.

The End

The end is near. People say it's coming in 2012, and maybe there right. The country is in debt, Microsoft is have a problem that may have huge impact on the world. Who knows maybe it's Barok Aboma or just Microsoft, or maybe it's a mix of everything that is happening. So with our last words lets ask ourselves is Microsoft really that bad. Because with out them majority of the people who are ready this wouldn't be able to read it.

Phones of the Future

2008-07-06T16:28:00.001-05:00

Ok so if you've ever had a cell phone you'll notice that there are some places that you don't get a signal. This is because cell phones are just that. They get a signal from a tower. This tower is a cell phone tower. And when your in the near by radius of one you can get signal. The radius that these towers give off will vary for each tower. And sometimes they will overlap each other. These radius's are known as cells, hence the word cell phone.

The above illustration shows and example of cells. The black dots in the middle of each circle are towers. The circles are how far the signal will go. The red means that the cells overlap on other towers signals. And the green says hey man your shit out of luck know cell phone using here.

So if your in a country type of area or a small town with no towers near by, like where I'm from then you SOL. Or maybe not. I have a wireless network and so do lots of other people. In fact more people have wireless networks then cell phones. In fact even stores and public locations have them and call them WiFi Hotspots. And WiFi is the secret to the cell phones of the future.

Anyone can easily set up a WiFi network. And it's very easy to do so. With a WiFi hotspot all you need is a WiFi enabled phone, with skype. With that and SkypeIn and SkypeOut you can send receive phone calls from and to other phones. You can also send SMS messages, Faxes, and much more.

Now this isn't full proof just yet due to wireless networks aren't always going to be in your area, but it is easier to set one up so it will catch on and be more reliable then cell phones ever have or will be. But as of right now cary both and only use that cell phone of yours when needed.

Dr. Google

2008-06-06T16:28:00.000-05:00

Is google trying to save the world? Or are they just concerned about my health? Can anyone access google health? Or am I just that special?

Yes it's true google is now offering online medical advice. When I started messing around with it for the first 5 minutes it seemed perfect. However when you start to really get into it you start to notice just like all technology it is anything but perfect.

No I'm knocking it. Because I love it and I love google. But if any of my google buddies read my blogs then maybe you can fix this problems. First problem is simple and I understand what is wrong with it. When you go to add the allergies you have allergies to medications will not show up. So you will have to add them manually. This is because you probably created two separate DB tables. One for medications and the other for allergies. However all medications can have at least one person that is allergic to them. So why not add all the medications from the Medication DB table to the allergies DB table. This will in turn make google health even more flexible.

Second problem I have is the fact it is limited to the amount of informational sites available. Not only that but it would be great if google found out a way so you could pay all and I mean every single medical bill you have online. Even for people who may not have medical insurance.

U Broadcast

2008-05-12T14:12:00.000-05:00

Have you ever wanted to own your own radio station or have your own talk show. Well now you can have both. With internet radio broadcasting you can broadcast what ever you want, weather it is prerecorded or live. There are several internet broadcasting sites out there but the coolest is ubroadcast.

There is a disadvantage to using this site though. If your not very tech savvy you may spend hours trying to set it up. The reason to this is it is still under beta testing. Which means they are using you as a ginni pig. Don't worry all good companies do this, in fact it is better if they do release a beta so they can work out the bugs. Even google does beta testing.

Usually beta user hardly ever experience a problem with the product. However ubroadcast has a real big problem, that falls into alot of peoples hands. This problem happens when you try to go live.

When you try to go live you may get a problem where a pop up window will come up on your screen and you wont be able to get rid of it. You then will have to literally spend hours reading threw there forums on how to fix the problem, just to find out all you needed to do was download an MS DX9.0c hotfix.

Now the hotfix could be all you needed. However if your running Windows XP or earlier, you may or may not have some peaces of software that Microsoft gives away for free.

The .Net Framework 2.0

Direct X 9.0c

Now in case your not very tech savvy you may not know what all these downloads are. But if your a programmer you would know that this software is made with certain programming languages. These Languages were made by Microsoft and the programs made with them can only run on M$ product, limiting ubroadcast market. Also you may notice that it is an older version it is the 2005 version. And they currently have the 2008 version. This means ubroadcast better wake up with the times and use JAVA to make there programs. This way Apple users Linux user and even those cell phone phreaks can use it.

What you also need to download in addition to all of the above and the ubroadcast player and manager is the Flash player, and a PDF viewer both can be downloaded from the ubroadcast website or from the Adobe website.

So if you have all that extra junk on your computer you can now start broadcasting. But say you want to have reruns of your previous broadcast play when your not live. Well you can use pretty much any recording software and have that record while your doing your show. But what I have to give a big +++ to ubroadcast for is that they recommend using Audacity

So in my personal opinion I wouldn't have made ubroadcast with VS .Net at all no matter what year it was. Also I wouldn't have made it so it had to be depended on so many extra programs. And most of all I feel that it is to buggy to be considered Beta I would classify it as Alpha and would have test more before releasing to the public.

However I do enjoy using it and I probably want try to compete with them because I have no interest in doing so. So if your a listener or just a broadcaster you can hear my talk show called Geek Speak. It is on channel 13938, and I will talk about different technologies out there and give free tech support. My first show should be on by the beginning of next month because I have to free some of my time up to actually talk.

Threw the eyes of google

2008-03-20T22:01:00.000-05:00

As you may know, Google, Yahoo, and M$N Live search engines don't look at website the way we do. Mostly because they can't see the graphics, and pictures. If you've never built a website and don't plan on learning HTML or some other website language, you may never understand how these search engines see the world wide web.

But if your serious about getting your website up on the web and getting it to show up in the top search results. You will want to know how these search engines view websites. Now you can caugh up several thousands of dollars to higher someone who is experienced in SEO(search Engine Optimizing) or a SEO program(A program that does SEO work). But if your a cheap ass, which is perfectly ok and I support that, because that means you want to learn how to do it yourself.

So first what you will want to do is learn how search engines view your website. To be honest with there are many text based web browsers out there. But I would recommend using Lynx to view sites to see how google sees them. The reason I would recommend this is even google says that is how it sees the websites.

View a few site in the browser to see how they look. You might notice that they look much different then what you see. That is pretty much how google sees these sites.

Then you are going to want to add your website to different search engines.

Google

Yahoo

Live

Ask (Currently there is no possible way on earth to submit your site to Ask. So you just have to wait for them to find you.)

aol (uses google technology so if your site shows up in google it will show up in aol)

AltaVista (uses google technology so if your site shows up in google it will show up in aol)

Dog Pile (use Yahoo, Google, and M$N Live technologies so no need to submit your site here.)

After your done doing that you will want to validate your site code. Depending on what languages your using for your site, you may need to use different validators. And there are many types out there by many companies. But if you want the best results you might want to go to W3C, because they are the ones who decide what languages need to be put on the web. In a sense they are the titans of the web.

HTML Validator

CSS Validator

RSS Feed Validator

XML Validator

Sitemap Validator

If all of your page validate then that is great. That means your format is good, and your chances are very high in getting into google. Also to remain higher up in search engines try to avoid hidden text or links and door way pages created just for search engines or other cookie cutter approaches. Also don't use cloaking or redirects, automated automated queries Load pages with irrelevant keywords do not use multiple domain names or sub domains with the same content. Another thing that is very surprising is your rankings will decrease in google if your site is a phishing site or downloads malware onto a persons computer.

If your site did not make it into the search engines for some reason or another then you can always fix your site and resubmit it for reconsideration.

You may notice that search engines wont always catch all the pages of your website. Well that is just because the spiders haven't crawled those pages yet. They will eventually. But to speed things up you may want to add a sitemap. A sitemap is an XML file that has all the urls you want search engines to search. Search engines will usually search the sitemap first to see if it got all of the URLs. If it missed any it will know exactly where to go since you told it the exact URL.

Now if you want to hide certain URLs from the public, can use something called a robots file. A robots file is just a simple txt file, that says what pages to allow and not allow search engines to search.

And further more to get listed higher into the search engines is to post links to your website all over the web. Some places to post them in would be your Profiles, groups(only if the groups don't say no spamming) or classifieds. Other social networking sites, Classified sites such as Craigslist, Blogger or Press Release websites. You could also join a web ring.

Making a pirated version of Windows XP genuine

2008-02-26T14:31:00.000-05:00

Ok. I think I've pissed off the right people long enough. And I apologize my loyal blog readers that I haven't posted in so long. However I've been very busy and haven't had much of a chance. But to day I feel like pissing off yet another fortune 500 company. This company is the king of software. Yeah that's right I'm talking about you Microsucks.

First lets look at there history. These guys are the most slickest criminals around. They made there first million off of software that they didn't even make. No I'm not talking about Altair BASIC. I'm talking about MS-DOS (DOS Disk Operating System). But when before they bought it it was called QDOS(Quick & Dirty Operating System). If they had worked on it more then they did. They would have found good way to prevent piracy. After that they literally stole the Macintosh OS from Apple. So now they where messing with code, that was pretty much trial and error. Since they didn't make it they could only make logical guesses on what certain code would do and why people coded it that way. Which would be pretty safe. But for some reason they had this stupid idea on building the working code on top of DOS. Now there are reasons they did this mostly for compatibility. But this made the code even more unstable and easier to hack. In the late 1990's the created a new File System called NTFS. Which is much more secure. But they were still building off of DOS. And not only that but all you needed at the time was a computer with a CD burner, and make a copy of the OS, then right down the product key.

Then the year 2001 came. The first Windows OS built from the ground up. They had first released it to corporate businesses. And during that time they had already found several security wholes. So the quickly came out with a Service Pack and released it to the public. But it wasn't long before copies of the corporate versions started to leak into the public. And alot of people started downloading them, and and the Service Pack. Then they would slip stream them together. At this point in time it was as simple as making a Key Generator to crack the Activation code. However when Microsoft released Service Pack 2 they also released genuine advantage.

Most people try to crack Genuine advantage. Just to find out when they crack it they do make Windows Genuine until a New Version of Genuine advantage comes out. They then have to crack it all over again. And this time it's even harder.

Why not simply create a registry file, and when your done making it click it and let it make Windows XP Genuine. Can't be done you say. I'm here to prove you wrong. And to show you that many people have already done it. Below is the code copy and paste it into Notepad. Then save the file as anyname.reg

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WPAEvents]
"OOBETimer"=hex:ff,d5,71,d6,8b,6a,8d,6f,d5,33,93,fd
"LastWPAEventLogged"=hex:d5,07,05,00,06,00,07,00,0f,00,38,00,24,00,fd,02

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion]
"CurrentBuild"="1.511.1 () (Obsolete data - do not use)"
"InstallDate"=dword:427cdd95
"ProductId"="69831-640-1780577-45389"
"DigitalProductId"=hex:a4,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,36,39,38,33,31,2d,36,34,30,2d,\
31,37,38,30,35,37,37,2d,34,35,33,38,39,00,5a,00,00,00,41,32,32,2d,30,30,30,\
30,31,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,0d,04,89,b2,15,1b,c4,ee,62,4f,e6,64,6f,01,00,\
00,00,00,00,27,ed,85,43,a2,20,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,31,34,35,30,34,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,ce,0e,\
00,00,12,42,15,a0,00,08,00,00,87,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,\
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,94,a2,b3,ac
"LicenseInfo"=hex:9e,bf,09,d0,3a,76,a5,27,bb,f2,da,88,58,ce,58,e9,05,6b,0b,82,\
c3,74,ab,42,0d,fb,ee,c3,ea,57,d0,9d,67,a5,3d,6e,42,0d,60,c0,1a,70,24,46,16,\
0a,0a,ce,0d,b8,27,4a,46,53,f3,17

Congrats your Windows is now a legit version for ever.

Hacking Verizon Cell Phones

2008-01-11T17:44:00.000-05:00

The time every geek has waited for has come to me. I got a cool LG cell phone for Christmas, and what is even better is I don't have to pay the bill. Well kind of. My mother who is paying the bill told me I can only make phone calls and send text messages with the phone Or the bill will sky rocket and I will have to chip in. So god damn it thought I have this cool phone with all these cool features and I can only use 2 of them. But my hacker sense where tingling and I was determent to find away around this without paying.

It turns out my LG cell phone has a memory card slot. Yippy I thought hackers paradise. It took a mini SD card. So I bought I 2GB mini SD card and put a few videos on it. I then viewed the videos on the phone. I did the same with music and pictures. Now I also know that my phone supports Java Applications. So why should I bother buying Applications for my phone on Verizon's so called Get It Now service (It should be call get it now for a price). I could easily make a program or a game right on my computer in Java then put it on the card and wholla, I had already beaten Verizon at there own game 4 times. No Verizon a.k.a Big Brother your not going to get extra money out of me.

But the true problem that I had ran into was the fact that my website has a form made with PHP and when people fill the form out and submit it, the info gets E-Mailed to me. This would be a problem I thought. After all how on Earth can I check my E-Mails on my phone if I can't use the internet on the phone. I felt another hack coming on. Then I found out that SMS or Text Messaging is actually the same thing as E-Mails. Literally. And that the E-Mail address wasn't hard to figure out at all. The E-Mail address was my phone number@vtext.com. So if my Verizon cell phone number was +1-807-555-1212 then my cell phones E-Mail address would be 8075551212@vtext.com. So I wanted to try sending myself a SMS threw my GMail account. So sent myself a message and and few seconds later my Cell phone beeped telling me I had a text message. It even said that it was from my E-Mail address. I quickly changed my E-Mail address on my PHP form to my phones E-Mail address. I then filled the form out. It worked but I had to many fields and the message got cut off. So I change the form to have the old E-Mail address on it for more flexibility. But I then added another form that limited the amount of character someone could type. This way it would get cut off.

God damn I thought Verizon must be a genius how on Earth am I going to get direction, news, movie times, flight times or even where someone was calling me from by looking up there area code. I knew you could do all of this with google, but I needed internet and I am to much of a cheap as. It turns out google has several ways for you to do alot of stuff off line. For a regular google search you could just send them an SMS message to 466453 or in letters that would be google. Then send a search query as your message. Now for driving direction the easier way to do that is by calling goog411. The phone number is +1-800-GOOG411 and then you say what your looking for.

Yes I know I beat you Verizon and there is nothing you can do about it. Everything I did to beat you is perfectly legal and legit. And I will never pay more then is necessary for a service.

We Are Obsolete

2007-12-08T20:44:00.000-05:00

We Are Obsolete That is what computers would be saying by now. Now I'm not talking about Moores Law. Instead I'm talking about the way we use our current computers. We keep buying bigger and bigger hard drives and other storage devices. And why? Mostly because we are unaware that we can have a computer with no more the 64MB of flash memory, and an internet connection. Don't believe me. I'll prove it.

First you've got to find out what you need a computer for. Different people need a computer for different reasons. And once you find out what exactly you need your computer for, there are many alternatives other then clogging your computer up with tons of extra software.

I need my computer for work

If you need your computer for work, you can always use google docs and spreadsheetsThis is a free service google offers that lets you do word processing, spreedsheets, and a new comer to this service is now google presentations. It will only be a matter of time that google will also offer a nice database program. And also when you download your saved data from these services you can choose to download it in a number of formats.

Do you need to manage your money and expense. If you ask me the safest way to do such a thing would be do online bank strait from your banks website. And if you have more then one bank account with several banks sign up for all of the banks online banking plans. Usually these are all free to do. However if you just want to be able to access one site and manage all your bank accounts, you might want to try Buxfer.
If you truly need an OS for any other things that your business does, you may want to try You OS However there programs aren't compatible with other OSes. Which is a major bummer.

But I mostly use my computer for photos, music, and videos

Well for photos there are several choice you can choose from.
Photo Buckets
Googles Picasa (only supports JPEGs to my knowledge)
Flickr
Image Shack
And if you want your photos to be private and not viewed by anyone then you can always set up an FTP Server. Just go to your favorite website hosting company and purchase some disk space.
For videos you might want to try
Rip Way (they do everything. You can upload webpages, photos, music, and videos)
VidiLife
For music I can only think of Rip Way

But what about games?

Games! Games! are you out of your mind computers are tools, if you want to play games you should get a game console. But if you still insist on playing games. You might want to check to see if your current OS has the games you like installed by default. If it doesn't you don't have to install anything else, just go to Games.com

And that is about it.

The Underground World Of Software

2007-11-16T21:00:00.000-05:00

What if I told you that you can make your computer faster, more secure with less bugs and not pay a single penny. Now add all that up along with one other fact, the software isn't pirated, it's completely legal to use it.

Whats that? You say I must be insane. Believe it or not all software used to be like this. In fact before the 1980's it was considered to be crazy to even think of selling or buying software. And it should still be considered that way. Because there are still programs out there that are free to use. No I'm not talking about ancient, dinosaur software that serves no purpose these days. All these programs are new and serve every purpose that your commercial software serves. In fact they have entire OSes that are free to use.

Let's get things strait first

In case you haven't figured it out yet I'm talking about Open Source software. Also known as free software, protected under the GNU(pronounce ganew, stands for GNU's Not Unix) GPL (General Public License). And even though most of this software is free to use other people sell it. People use the term Free Software to loosely like I was doing up above. Even though most of those programs are free what Free Software is really about is Freedom. To learn more go to the GNU's Website and view there License. But my favorite Open Source License is the Debian License

Now that you completely understand the beauty in Free Software

Transitioning over completely to open source software may be hard for most people. If your a Mac user you will be able to make the switch easier, because Apple use a Unix Kernel, and also supports the open source community. But for Winblows (Winblows is what us open source phreaks, or freaks call Windows) users you may have a harder time. But no matter how you look at it you don't have to go cold turkey.

Start by downloading a few open source programs that are supported under your OS. You might want to first try a different web browser that is open source. Here are a few of the open source one out there.

Firefox(currently a Linux version, Mac version & Windows version)

Sea Monkey(currently for Windows Version, Mac, Version & Linux version)

Opera(I'm not sure if it is really open source but it works on everything)

Konquorer(currently only for Linux that I know of, but Apples Safari was built of of it)

Then you can download an alternative to M$ Office. There are many open source alternatives out there but my favorite is OpenOffice.org One of my favorate features in it is that is support all types of formats. So I don't need to rewrite something that was made in M$ Word Or M$ Excel.

Now if you use out look I would suggest you try Thunderbird

And if you have multiple IM's then you'll know what I mean when I say they really slow down your system. In that case I would suggest using GAIM or Pidgin. Both are made by the same people. GAIM is considered to be obsolete now, but Pidgin took it's place. Pidgin is wonderful. You can chat to people on Yahoo IM, AIM, GTalk, MSN Messanger, ICQ, MySpace, IRC and tons of other IM's I've never even heard about.

Those are the ones I mostly use. But there are open source programs for everything out there. And yes they even have games that are open source. And if you start to use these programs you will notice your computer runs nicer and faster. But what you may not need to know is that your system is more secure now to.

Image Maps & Splices

2007-10-26T22:05:00.000-05:00

Just to let you know I thought it would just be a funny thing to post an entire blog in binary. And in case you couldn't read what my last blog said in binary. It was the first part of the Hackers Manifesto. That being said. Today I'm going to be talking about splices and image maps.

What is a Splice?

A splice is an alternative to an image map. Pretty much what it is is an Image that is chopped (sliced) up into several images. There are several advantages to doing this that image maps can't do.

What is an Image map?

An image map is a whole picture (not sliced up). And when you click on a certain part of the picture you web page will do a certain thing.

Why use Splices?

Splices are great for several different reasons. One reason is that for each slice you can format it a different way. So if you want a really good quality for part of an image and a crappy quality for another part of an image you can save them in 2 different formats (.bmp, jpg, .gif)Thus saving you space on your server.

Why use Image Maps?

There may be times when you need to use an Image map, because if you had a picture with say a house and a tree, and they are both in the middle of the picture with with odd shapes, obviously splices wont work the way you need them to. And even if you did it wouldn't look right. In this case Image maps are needed.

Good Examples of using splices

If your going to just be doing Circles and Squares such as clicking on black squares of a checker board. Or clicking on poka dots. Then sprites are cool to use. They would also be easier to use this way.

Bad examples of using Splices

A bad example of using splices is using them to make a map of the USA and making it so you can click on each individual state. The reason this would be bad idea is because states are different shapes.

Good Examples of using Image Maps

Well the perfect example is a map of the USA. Another good one is for a play waldo game.

So how do you make Splice?

Splices are easy. Take your picture. Think to your self where do I want my picture to be click able. Ok so I want it to be click able in the top left corner, top right corner, bottom left corner, bottom right corner. So I will crop the corners out of the image and make each corner a separate image. No I will add those image on to the site and have them so close to each other it will look like the same picture. Well that is a splice.

Now say that the top left corner has only two different colors. So I can make it a more compact image and save space. So I will turn that corner into a gif file. But the top right corner has alot of colors so I will leave that image as a jpg file. So now instead of the image being 125KB it might only be 100KB. So we just freed up 25KBs by making parts of the spliced image smaller by changing there formats.

So how do you make an Image Map

There are two types of Image Maps. one type is a server side Image Map, the other is a client side Image Map. The most commonly one now is a client side Image Map. A client side Image Map is where it runs on the Users side. This will be the one I will teach today.
First add an Image Tag like so.

We will say that is a picture of me holding my MP3 player that I made.
So now we want it so people can click on my eyes to be able to see what color they are. And we also want to have the user click on the MP3 player to get a closer look at it. To do this we would type the following after the Image tag.

Pretty much what that means is simple.
the word map is the name of the tag. The word Name is the same thing as id but it is for Internet Explorer. the word id is telling the recognizing what other tag has the same id.
The word area is the start of the area tag. The word shape is to tell the web browser which shape to make for the click able area of the picture. The word href is where to link to. Now for the scariest part. The word coords is short for coordinates. And it tells the web browser where on the image is supposed to be click able. Ok it's not that hard if you know where the part of the image is located.

We would also add some extra things to the image tag. Like so

Well now you have made an image map. I hope it serves you good in the future.

Geek Speek

2007-10-03T20:39:00.000-05:00

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Trust nothing you see

2007-09-02T11:18:00.000-05:00

We live in the future now. Where anything is possible, and everyone is forced to look in a certain manner. Business man is stereotyped as someone dresses with a suite and tie. A doctor is someone with a white coat a stephiscope. If you are not a certain way you are laughed at and made fun of. Being called a Nerd or Geek. If you think a certain way you must not be normal and they say your crazy or you have schizophrenia. Because of this cruel and harsh reality we live in today. The media has been forced to make normal people feel even worse about themselves, causing young and beautiful women to become anorexic.

Well this is the truth. No one is perfect. No one will ever be perfect. We where all born unique. And if you think that all those people on TV or in those magazines are perfect. You are very wrong. Don't even believe what is write in front of you. Never believe anything you see. Back in the day people used to do slight of hand tricks to fool people. Now the media uses computers. And anyone can do what I am about to show you.

If government hates you they can make you look like monster, if they love you they can make you look like are model. But hey are those models really as pretty as they appear. With a simple tool that can be purchased by anyone people can make others look nothing the way they really look. And without special tools you may never be able to tell that these images have been doctored up. Check it out.

This is what my friend did to a photo

This is what my teacher did

Hacking Google Maps

2007-08-17T22:03:00.002-05:00

So I just recently had a customer who needed a map on his website, that I made for him. And because I have never put a map on website before I figured it would be a challenge, which is exactly what I wanted. So I gladly said I would do it. And within a couple hours of fooling around trying different techniques and searching the web I found te solution. The answer was simple and it is made by my favorite website GOOGLE. Google has feature called Google Maps. And since Google is part of the open source community a lot of times they will release source code and let you edit the features of some of there products. In order to do this you would need to know exactly what you want to edit.

For Example
Editing Google Email
Editing Google Desktop
Editing YouTube
Editing Google Maps
Editing Google AdSense
And tons of other things(if google has made it I bet you could edit it)

So if you want a map in your site is very simple. But first you need a few things.

Things You Need

1: A computer
2: An internet connection
3: A Google Account(if you don't have one it's easy to get one just sign up)
4: Basic Web Development Knowledge
5: A URL or a domain name. You can get one here
6: A fully functional brain

If you have all these things your all set to go. So this is what you would do. You go to the location of the APIs on Google. In this case it would My Account > More > Code > Google Apps > Google Maps API. For a visual example look at the pics down below More > Code Then Google Map's API Then Sign Up

Once your signed up you should have unique ID. You must use this in your site. And using someone else's wont work, because of the different URL. Now Google give you a sample google Map API to build of of. So you just need to copy and paste that code into the site you made. How ever the code is made for the location of Polo Alto. So if you want the map in a different area, you can't just say I want it to be centered on the Yankees stadium. Nor can you use addresses. This is pretty much the hard part of making your API. You need to know the Latitude & Longitude of the location of where you want the map to be centered at.

So how do you know what the Latitude & Longitude is?

I don't believe google provides any tools for finding the latitude and longitude, which is a shame. Because it makes life a whole lot more difficult. However if you do a google search on the web for Latitude and longitude you will get a wealth of tools, a lot of which I found either didn't work, where to complicated or where accurate but not precise. But here are some of the better and easier tools I found.
Address Converter(just type the address of the place you want to find. When I used this tool it got with in the first 30 miles away. So it is ok if you don't care that it is a little off, but sometimes you need it to be precise)
LatLonFinder(this is by far the easiest and funnest one to use. It is pretty much just plain old google maps that you can't do a search with just zoom in and out, and find out the longitude and latitude)
Latitude Longitude Position Finder(this one works the same way as LatLonFinder, but is a little more difficult)
I would suggest book marking the above links so you can have them to use when ever you decide to make a new Map.

Understanding The Code

First let's look at our sample code

So now let's look at the line of code that says map.setCenter(new GLatLng(37.4419, -122.1419), 13);
This is probably the most important lines of code in the google maps API. Pretty much this is the code that tells google where to point the map, and at what zoom level to have it at. So if I wanted to change the location of the map to be centered at the yankees stadium the code would look like this map.setCenter(new GLatLng(40.641967, --74.075399), 13);. Now this map isn't zoomed in close enough, I can't see the roads or anything. So I want to set the zoom level closer. So I would change the 13 to say a 16 in the line of code. So it would look like this map.setCenter(new GLatLng(40.641967, --74.075399), 16);

So now you've just learned how to hack Google Maps API. So now your on your way to making a big difference on how people view your website, or you might be changing the world with a cool new way to use google maps. And hey if google likes your idea enough they might want to have it might graduate and become a major part of google. Now that would be something to tell the kids about.