Technology blog, Science and Mystery

How to make phone not reachable without removing battery /SIM ?

2013-01-25T04:21:00.001-08:00

Recently i was searching android application that can make phone not reachable, but surprisingly i did not find any, being android mobile application developer i thought of writing my own app and upload it to google play but i did not find any api's in android SDK(Software Development Kit) to do so. So i was searching for "Call Not Reachable" app like every one else, i was in need to avoid a caller but don't want him to know that i am not picking up his call intentionally and also i don't wanted to switch the phone off which means to him i intentionally switched off the phone. But i just wanted him to hear "the subscriber you are trying to call is not reachable" or "Mobile number you are trying to call is out of network". and this would be a real excuse for me without hurting the caller. So i was baffled with the question is there any way to go "Out of reach" on my mobile phone without removing the battery or SIM? though i googled extensively i did not find any application or tricks to do it, but suddenly BAM! i remembered testing team in my company using a trick to make phone not reachable to test our mobile application for some scenario using ALUMINIUM FOIL.

Aluminum Foil Wrapping

Yes! the aluminium foil which is used to wrap food does the trick, wrapping your mobile device in aluminium foil blocks cell phone signals, this effect is called faradays cage or farady sheild an electric charge exists on the outside of a charged conductor, and the electric charge has no effect on anything enclosed by the conductor, Wrapping a cell phone in aluminum foil creates a Faraday cage. Because cell phone signals are electronic, the aluminum foil prevents the signal from reaching the cell phone.

So if you have a aluminum foil in your kitchen the it comes handy by making you unreachable on your cell phone.

Faraday Bag or Cell Phone Signal Blocker Pouch

Just search for signal blocker pouch in amazon you find tens of them and yeah it really works its easy to use, just put your mobile device in this pouch and your are unreachable these mobile cost some where between 4$ to 20$ depending on make.

remember to remove it from the pouch else you might miss important calls, so bottom line only way to now go out of network is just to enclose your device with metal it can be Foil, pouch with metallic enclosure or metallic box all works on the principle of faraday shield.

But be warned some times even enclosure with above objects also can have a slight signal leak and you might get the call and also above method is a battery drainer since your cell phone actively be searching for the network last but not least you might miss important calls so better use it as worst case scenario and try to attend all the calls.

Fake international missed calls do not call back

2012-11-25T20:59:00.001-08:00

Think twice before calling back any unknown missed calls that too if it is a international and unidentified phone number, recently i got a missed call which was just 1 - 2 rings from this number +248980232 but when i searched for this number on the web i came to know that it was a fake number and many people who had called back had got deducted or charged premium ISD rates.

These kinds of fraud are not new to western countries this kind of scam exisit from more than decade and it is said to be originated in japan in 2000's and is called "Wangiri fraud" Wangri means one ring and cut.

these calls are intelligently done by setting up the number looking as if it is a local number say a number may start with +80 or +22 mimicing it as bangalore or mumbai number but these are virtually premium-rate numbers when called back we are screwed big time, the call rate might be anywhere between 50 - 200 rupees perminute so guys beware before calling back any missed calls on your mobile phone.

Google Apps Not free, Alternative Solutions for email

2012-11-12T06:34:00.000-08:00

Best alternative to google apps email for your custom domain, Its time to move from limited 10 accounts google apps and Get outlook.com (live.com) free email service from Microsoft for your domain with 500+ free email accounts. When google started google apps for domain they were offering 5000 accounts for a domain slowly they reduced to 2000, than to 1000, than 200, then 100, then 50 and finally to mere 10 who knows one day they may reduce it to ~~3 or 5~~ update: Google apps for standard edition is not free anymore, google is moving from "User Centric" to "Business Centric" forcing small business and organizations to buy their email service which was once free.

But many don't know there exist a free, reliable and better email service from Microsoft where you can get 500 email accounts for your domain for free whats more it even as calendar, contacts, docs and MSN Messenger service similar to gtalk integration a complete email and cloud service that's not it you can even upgrade for free to get outlook.com like web-mail interface.

So how to signup?

Its free and easy, just Login to http://domains.live.com with your hotmail or live email id and create a admin account for your website/domain by clicking "Add Domain" Button as show in below pic

How to create mx, txt and spf records?

Once you add your website and accepts agreement? you will be automatically redirected to settings page where you will be given mx record enteries for email handling, txt record entry for proving domain ownership and spf record entries for email authentication see below pic just add entries in your domain admin panel wait for atleast 30mins and then click on refresh, most of the time added domain entries takes 10mins to 4hrs to get reflected and detected on web.

How to access email from web browser ?

For that you need to create a Cname record so that you can access email from your web subdomain and redirect it to "mail.live.com" or "outlook.com" so that your custom subdomain "mail.yourdomain.com" will be used to access email.

Once all the entries in your domain control panel is updated wait for 30mins and then enter mail.yourwebsite.com in browser it should automatically redirected to live login and you could access your email as shown in below pic by entering full email address and password

Main Features and Migration Changes you face while switch from Gmail to outlook.com hosting service:

--> Outlook offers unlimited space and 25mb attachment size where as gmail offers 10gb space and 25mb attachments, one plus point in outlook.com if your email attachment is more than 25mb it will automatically sent via skydrive

--> Gmail Supports both IMAP and POP, where as Outlook.com supports only pop to access mail via webclients but if you are accessing emails via mobile you can use exchange active sync which acts like imap with push email and whats more it even supports instant synchronization of calendar and contacts so that you will not loose your pim details.

--> In outlook you can recover permanently deleted emails that is if you empty trash accidentally and you lost on of your important email dont know how long you can retrieve deleted emails where as this facility is not available in gmail.

--> Both Google and outlook will offer online space where you can store large files and share it with your friends if it is more than 25mb.

--> In both you get messenger integration gtalk in case of Google apps and MSN messenger in case of live domains.

So with head to head collision with similar features both have its strengths and weakness now Google has limited its standard account to 10, Microsoft's live for domains look more attractive and better deal compared to Google apps standard. by the way use it you never return to gmail for email hosting.

Converting kitchen food waste to organic compost for home gardening

2012-10-20T08:43:00.003-07:00

Ever wonder how much bio-waste your kitchen produces every day? start collecting it and you come to know the shocking amount, on average your household may produce around 1 - 3 cereal bowl of organic waste such as vegetables scrap, tea/coffee grounds, egg shells, old bread, fruit skin(banana skin), cooked rice etc, i bet it always would have been ended tossed into garbage bins!

We are maintaining roof garden from past 20 years for many years i used to dump Tea grounds every day in all the pots, but from past 3 years i went a step a head by putting kitchen waste into pots though not converting into compost but directly putting into pots such as scrap veggies, banana skin and other fruit pulp and nature was taking it coarse slowly by converting it into compost.

Now recently i added more to the waste list such as cooked items such as popcorns, breads, biscuits, cookies etc and started converting it to compost by adding a layer of waste and a layer of mud on newly added food scraps and let it stay for at-least a month.

How do i use this compost?

I have lots of plats on my terrace pots such as Rose, Egg plants, Chilli Plant, Spinach, Mint, Chapardha Avare kai( I Guess Butter Beans in English), Malabar spinach aka Basella alba(Bachele soppu in kannada) Tomato Plant etc and compost thus produced will be nutrient rich fertilizer for my pots.

below are some pics of my roof garden, did not clicked tomatoes, eggplant and butter bean since it has withered and end of its life cycle will upload once its been re-planted and in full green

Chilli Plant

Mint Plant

Kitchen Waste (Carrot and Onion scrap and Tea Ground)

Spinach (Kanchee Soppu: Kannada, Kanchi Kuraku Telugu)

What are the kitchen waste that can be used for compost?
Do:
All vegetable and fruit scraps, Tea or coffee grounds, breads, biscuits, cookies, cooked and uncooked rice remains, egg shells etc

Dont's:
Avoid Meat, Fish, Bones, Dairy products, Oily Remains such as high fat snacks, though these are also bio-degradable they take lot of time to get compost and also they are smelly.

What are the Methods to convert kitchen waste to organic fertilizer?

There are lot of tutorial on YouTube and step by step methods explained in blogs just Google for "Home Composting Kitchen Waste" you get tons of videos and web search, see the above video for one of the method and if you are already doing this then share your experience and method followed here.

Outlook.com a gmail killer ? do we need a switch? poll

2012-09-28T00:35:00.002-07:00

Every one knows Microsoft's new email service Outlook.com a Hotmail revamp was made available more than a month ago, most of them who heard about it created a new account so did i, after giving it a try and checking out all the features one thing came to my mind is, do i really need to change ditching my existing gmail id? just for the windows 8 look and feel! though i tempted initially with outlook mail for its sleek and out of the box UI, i refrained to switch because of lacking feature and other reasons below:

Caste your vote and do say which do you think is better email service

1. UI Change does not attract new Users

Gmail offers me more than what i need, it's better than the corporate email service what most companies offer. It has important features such as pop, imap and exchange protocol support which you cannot find in free email services. whats more? lots of widgets in gmail lab which helps us personalize gmail to our taste, labels, voice and video chat in other words gmail is feature rich.

On the other hand outlook.com email is just a old wheels with new body created on the old chassis so called hotmail.

2. Change is hard and email is not a social network

People are more dependent on the email service for variety of purposes, using it as their means of communications to various services such as banking to daily communication with their friends and relatives it has become their primary identity on the world wide web and its like their virtual SSN. History has proven people have hopped between various social networking sites such as myspace, orkut, facebook etc but incase of the email service they seldom do because it is so tightly integrated with our daily online activities.

3. Gmail account is more necessary than we think.

Many yahoo, microsoft and apple fanatics who hate google still have gmail account because they cannot do away with important webservices such as google search, youtube, picasa, gtalk, android market etc all need gmail account one or the other time to use their services to the fullest.

4. Email may have attained end of its life cycle

Research have showed there is a lot of reduction on how many email a person sends perday just like it happened to snail mail a decade ago, this shows email services might have reached the end of its life cycle.

It was a time when cell phones were scares and instant messengers were non existant only way of communicatiting a distant friend was through reliable email service today with advent of messengers and social networking people share videos, jokes, gossips, etc online via social networking when once it was done via chain mail between friends.

Now people are using email as the medium for official communication or share documents which is presently not available on social network a day might come a social networking might replace email, so its too late for outlook.com to get into charts unless there is something cutting edge offered in its email service.

Though opinions expressed here are purely based on my personal perception and taste if you think outlook.com really beats gmail do comment and participate in the poll above

How to Optimize website for alexa ranking

2012-07-26T06:43:00.004-07:00

can we believe in alexa rank and stats ? what is a good ranking on Alexa ? can it be trusted ? today one of my friend asked what is considered as good alexa rank ? though question was easy the answer to it was quite a tricky, for people who don't know about alexa, alexa is a powerful tool used to rank web traffic, lower the rank higher the traffic of any website or blogs, though some people say site within 500k does well and others say 100k or less is great, i think it depends on the persons view on how big the website is and the context he is in, for example say if he is a web admin of some big website he may consider the alexa stats in few 100's where as a small and passionate bloggers like us something in 100k's is really a success.

Though most of the people takes alexa as a metric to refer any website popularity or traffic most of the web admins say alexa is not at all accurate, and the reason to it is alexa calculate traffic based on the website visited by the users who are using alexa toolbar and anything out of it will not be calculated and also change in small number of visitors form alexa tool bar users will greatly change alexa ratings.

I am Alexa stats user from almost 2 years and i regularly monitor traffic and cross check with other statistics tools such as site meter, Google analytic and others and according to me yes alexa results are not accurate and cannot be judged the website based on its rankings unless and until it is a high traffic websites whose rank falls in thousands not more than that.

recently i came across a website according to its author web traffic to her site is as below

Page Rank – 3
Daily Page Views – 400+
Monthly Page Views – 15,000 +

but amazingly she has the alexa for her site is 31k see above stats

my website has(ceveni.com)

pagerank -2
Daily page Views - 2000+
Monthly Page Views - 70,000+

but still my Alexa rank is toggling between 250k to 350k

Q. So bottom line how to optimize website for alexa ranking?

Ans. Just install alexa toolbar in few machines and keep visiting your website automatically your alexa rank increases.

Though its my personal experience if any webmaster or other person reading this post can feel free to comment here and give your valuable inputs

income tax efiling password reset

2012-07-18T23:03:00.005-07:00

resetting login password at incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in is really pain in the ass the password reset procedure is really worst design, recently i wanted to file my IT returns online but unfortunately i forgot the password, these government website are so badly designed inspite of IT department boast of paying tax online it is not at all user friendly, last year i wasted one day just to figure out on how to create/register an account with my pan online Click here

And this year to my bad luck i am not able to reset the password inspite of several tries, the incometax india web portal gives three ways to reset your password

1. Enter Secret question answer
2. Enter E-filing Acknowledgement No.and Bank Account No.as mentioned in E-Return of Previous year
3. Enter PAN details

None of the above worked for me, even after giving correct ack and bank account number i was still unable to reset my password and coming to third option i was getting below error inspite of giving correct details

"Name mismatch. Please enter the correct Name.
Fathers Name mismatch. Please enter the correct Name."

WTF! i have not seen such a crappy, confusing, difficult and un user friendly password reset on any website in my 12 years of browsing experience. i wish i'd know which airhead designed this portal and i want to kick his ass black and blue.

isn't pan number, dob and email id is enough for any secured password reset? what ever it is still i am not able to reset pwd if any one of you have any idea please do post it here.

So what next? the only other option left is emailing to their service center at ask@incometaxindia.gov.in with below details:

Your name:
Your Father's name:
Date of birth:
Address:
Pan No:

It is said tha they will revert back within 1 or 2 days and if you do not receive any confirmation or assistance you can call their service center at 0124 2438000 seek their help.

How to sign android apk for market release :certificate signing

2012-06-25T06:22:00.012-07:00

Recently i wanted to upload my first free apk(app) to the market when i tried to upload the apk i was getting the below error: Market does not accept apks signed with the debug certificate. Create a new certificate that is valid for at least 50 years. Market requires that the certificate used to sign the apk be valid until at least May 18, 2034. Create a new certificate.

after searching a lot in android developer site i was not able to find any information but after lot of trials i came to know how to sign the apk below is the detailed procedure on how to do it

--> First of all make sure you have JDK installed.

--> create two folders "keytools" and inside it a folder named "keys" in c: or d: drive i am using desktop path in my case

C:\Documents and Settings\YOURNAME\Desktop\keytools
C:\Documents and Settings\YOURNAME\Desktop\keytools\Keys

--> Generate release signing Keys

C:\Documents and Settings\YOURNAME\Desktop\keytools>keytool -genkey -alias ScreenLock.keystore -keyalg RSA -validity 20000 -keystore keys/ScreenLock.keystore

fill the information as below you can fill all the fields or required fields according to your needs but do not forget to remember the key store password since its required during signing process of your android apk

 Enter keystore password: your secret text 
What is your first and last name?
[Unknown]:
What is the name of your organizational unit?
[Unknown]:
What is the name of your organization?
[Unknown]: Mobile Developers Inc
What is the name of your City or Locality?
[Unknown]:
What is the name of your State or Province?
[Unknown]:
What is the two-letter country code for this unit?
[Unknown]: US
Is CN=Unknown, OU=Unknown, O=mobdev, L=Unknown, ST=Unknown, C=US correct?
[no]: yes
Enter key password for <ScreenLock.keystore>
(RETURN if same as keystore password):

--> Now a new file will be created in below path named ScreenLock.keystore
C:\Documents and Settings\YOURNAME\Desktop\keytools\keys\ScreenLock.keystore

Note: Make sure you store this file because this file is needed for future upgrade of your app else If you sign the new version without using matching certificates, you will also need to assign a different package name to the application — in this case, the user installs the new version as a completely new application

--> Now the keystore is generated its time for signing the android apk / application now place your application in below path

C:\Documents and Settings\YOURNAME\Desktop\keytools\

and type below command

C:\Documents and Settings\YOURNAME\Desktop\keytools\jarsigner -verbose -keystore keys/ScreenLock.keystore -signedjar ScreenLock_signed.apk ScreenLock.apk ScreenLock.keystore

 Enter Passphrase for keystore: your secret text
adding: META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
adding: META-INF/ANDDEV_K.SF
adding: META-INF/ANDDEV_K.RSA
signing: res/drawable/icon.png
signing: res/layout/main.xml
signing: AndroidManifest.xml
signing: resources.arsc
signing: classes.dex

Now if you get output something similar to above your apk is signed and ready for market happy placing your apps on market.

below is the app i recently uploaded to the market using above signing method

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.screeblock.mobdev.in

Note: if the above command prompt commands does not work make sure to set JAVA Environment Variables and class path properly visit this URL http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/environment/paths.html for further reference, above methods are the result of bits a piece of information i got on the web its working successfully for me, if you think its not working for you and not able to sign the android apk for market using above method do let us know.

Thunderbird "Cannot find binary component" error solved

2012-04-10T06:40:00.003-07:00

Recently i started getting an error message "Minimize to Tray-Component Load Error" while launching or loading thunderbird and "Minimize to Tray" addon was not working properly, "Thunderbird + Minimize to Tray addon + leapord theme" is a killer combination and i use it for email access on all the system i work, Both in office and at home that's the reason i still haven't upgraded my thunderbird to 11.* from 3.1.*. because i just can't live without these addon's as the default mail clients such as outlook and outlook express does not really poll for mails and run in background and notify us whenever we get get mail.

Though error message clearly states that "Component Load Error" or "Cannot find binary component." which means some dll is missing to run this addon properly no matter how many times i download this addon from official mozilla addons site uninstalling thunderbird, deleting all the directories in "application data" etc still i was not able to fix it.

Finally i got to know the addon authors website address in mozilla site Here where i could download the latest working version of the addon which worked perfectly do leave a comment if this worked for you guys.

[solved] the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable

2012-03-21T07:17:00.003-07:00

Today evening i logged into my computer to but for my horror drive g: was corrupted and everything was changed when i clicked on any folder it was showing the error message "file or directory is corrupted and unreadable" i was totally pissed of because it was around 30gigs of important data see the below pic how the folders and files in corrupted drive looked click on the image to enlarge

after googling for a while from microsoft kb site i came to know that This behavior can occur if the file, folder or file system index (Master File Table [MFT] or File Allocation Table [FAT]) is damaged.

solution was simple just to run the chkdsk to repair the damaged files and folder file system index just followed the simple steps see below and issue got fixed

1. Click on start and click on run
2. In command prompt type chkdsk/ f g: (drive g: in my case) and press enter
3. Click ok, thats it you are done

it takes time depending on your hard disk size and data in drive, in my case for 30gigs of data it took 5-10 mins see the below pic after running the chkdsk i was able to recover the data in the harddrive G: click on the image to enlarge

Warning: though chkdsk attempts to fix the file system index using chkdsk with the /f command some time data loss may occur so its better to use it unless until u have a full backup of your disk

below is the chkdsk syntax for windows xp

CHKDSK [volume[[path]filename]]] [/F] [/V] [/R] [/X] [/I] [/C] [/L[:size]]

volume	Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon), mount point, or volume name.
filename	FAT only: Specifies the files to check for fragmentation.
/F	Fixes errors on the disk.
/V	On FAT/FAT32: Displays the full path and name of every file on the disk.
/R	Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information (implies /F).
/L:size	NTFS only: Changes the log file size to the specified number of kilobytes. If size is not specified, displays current size.
/X	Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary. All opened handles to the volume would then be invalid (implies /F).
/I	NTFS only: Performs a less vigorous check of index entries.
/C	NTFS only: Skips checking of cycles within the folder structure.

Though this is the first time i ever faced this problem while using this system for last 7 years, this problem mostly occurs in secondary or external harddisk if you have faced the same problem and fixed it do comment back.

Went to the church for first time in life

2012-03-15T07:46:00.003-07:00

I visited church for first time today, being a Hindu i never went to the church,mosque or worshiping place of any other religion, temples are the only spiritual and worshiping place i visited my entire life and today i visited church with my sister since she wanted to light the candles for some reason... My sister has a christian friend with whom she visit church once in a while since she was not there this time i accompanied her.

And what weird is i was touching statues of Jesus and other christian gods with hand in praying in Hindu style, while all of them down there were kneeling and giving prayers, all the time i was inside the church i was feeling uneasy to wear shoes, since we Hindus always leave our footwear outside the temple but still it was a nice experience visiting the church for the first time and i was not able to experience or know how priest/father pray or perform religious rites since i visited untime.

below is the pic of Epiphany Church near jayanagar 4th block which i visited.

Just writing this post for future reference down the memory lane to know when i visited the church and for longingly remembering

Which color ink to sign documents red green blue or black

2012-03-01T08:28:00.004-08:00

who can sign in green ink? can anyone do signature in red ink, Is there any legal rule that green and red can only be used by government authorities or people at higher position this was the question that was bugging in mind from my childhood but never attempted or cared to know about it, but today something made me to research on this subject but after googling i did not get any convincing straight forward answer all the i came to know was different version of answers based on their own opinions but not convincing or authoritative any where even there was no wiki entry to best of my knowledge on it on which ink for which rank authorities.

Even the transport authority official sign in my driving license was green in color but same sign was red in my sister driving license so this shows level of authority does not mandately need to use same color to do signature.

But popular opinion and belief in internet forum and blogs suggests:

--> Blue and Black: is used by lowest level government officials or people in general positions
--> Green: Will be used by people at middle level such as notary public, oath commissioner (though i always thought green is for highest level)
--> Red: is used by people at highest level (not sure i thought it to be at mid-level)

But i have seen many privileged gazette officers use both red and green ink to sign now after googling for answers my doubts turned into confusion and i really did not get any solid answers any where on the net, who ever reading this post know more about which ink signifies what leave of authority do leave a note here.

Bsnl online bill payment landline bangalore missing SSA or STD

2012-02-22T06:00:00.003-08:00

Recently i wanted to pay BSNL landline bill i registered in portal.bsnl.in, i was asked to add my phone account i selected the circle as Karnataka and when i needed to add SSA or STD code for Bangalore from the list i was amazed to see that Bangalore was missing after a lot of search i finally found a way to pay bill online, really these bsnl and government portal are always stupidly designed or maintained i even had problem filing income tax online see below pic

Paying BSNL landline bill online is very easy just follow simple steps below

1. Log into www.bangaloretelecom.com
2. On left hand side click on "View & Pay Phone bills online"
3. On top corner select New User? Sign up now link
4. Add your telephone number, consumer number and register
5. Now click on bills you can see the outstanding landline bill and can make a payment directly from there see below pic

Though i paid my bill via BSNL bangalore portal it is better to register in bangalore one so that we can pay all the bills such as cellphone, landline and electricity bill at the same place.

Facebook is not safe ? its your unofficial personal database to the world

2012-02-12T21:57:00.000-08:00

Lately i am feeling highly unsecured on Facebook, sometimes i feel like i am exposing more personal information about myself in this virtual world than real world with friends and family, Facebook has grown to such a enormous scale that it holds more personal information of people around the world compared to intelligence organizations like FBI, CIA, CBI etc collectively put together, i sometimes feel Facebook is another spying portal if you know first name and last name or email id you can get significant amount of information of the person you are searching, even government spy agencies around the world is using it as tool to fight crime, not only facebook it applies to twitter also.

Recently European couples in United Stated was detained and deported back to their home country just for tweeting silly message about United States, i read somewhere that USCIS(United States Citizen Ship and immigration Services) is also tracking applicants on facebook and one person was even showed his photographs downloaded from FB and questioned more by Visa officer though creepy its true see below video how CIA saved millions in intelligence data gathering because of facebook

Now a days its fun for me finding people on facebook who i encounter in virtual world such a forums, chatting rooms, websites etc easily on facebook with their complete persona portrayed like never before i think facebook is systematically collecting your data to become a one world Spying agent, the day may be near when people realize the fact and start coming out of this spying portal.

Though many of my friends who are facebook ambassadors and fanatics claims it to be safe and secure pointing towards its privacy features still facebook does not deny to handover our information to Government agencies without our permission, whatever it is i am planning to slowly remove my personal info from this notorious website and eventually delete my account.

Keep your personal information and other things on facebook as minimal as possible, because you don't know what information about yourself exposed on this portal becomes a silver bullet against you in near future, best use facebook just as a chatting application instead of sharing your personal and family pics, interests, things you hate, personal emailid's, phone numbers etc etc, and btw don't add strangers that's the biggest mistake we all tend to do, play safe

USCIS denied my petition l1b individual premium

2012-02-10T09:24:00.000-08:00

after a month long wait finally my l1b individual was denied stating that my petition was unable to prove that i have specialized or advanced knowledge, I strongly feel denial was really unfair.

My petition was submitted to USCIS on 14 dec and i got rfe on specialized knowledge on dec 23, it took a week to draft my specialized, advanced and proprietary knowledge in the document and finally submitted on jan 17th and got denial decision on jan 31, any person with no or even with little technical knowledge can easily understand the petition, and i suspect uscis adjudicator has not read my petition fully expect initial pages which contains brief introduction or partial information about my specialized knowledge because points he raised in denial letter is completely answered in my petition.

After my L1b filing and hell lot of research on USCIS process i got a lot of know how on how USCIS process the L1b or H1b petition, from my experience i learn't any tomdick and harry who do not have any specialized knowledge can easily get Petition approved if it is well documented its a major blunder in USCIS visa process for individual petitions.

This is a threat to small and startup because they do not have content writer like large and medium sized companies whose HR department can write a excellent approve able document where as in small companies and start ups even though employees with good specialized and advanced knowledge often tends to get denied just because of bad documentation.

USCIS should consider kind of business, number of employees, size of business all other factors before denying the petition because it really damages the business opportunities of start-ups and small size companies in the present competitive market where time plays a major role in company success.

For the people who are above to apply for L1b that too from small or startup companies please prepare the document well USCIS gives a shit whether you have specialized knowledge or not, approval always depends on just good documentation if possible hire a good content writer who can prepare the docs artistically and good attorney who has experience too, do inquire whether the lawyer has rich experience in filing L1b's because many lawyers have more experience in H1b rather than L1b.

Install new software Hang at 49% in eclipse IDE

2012-02-08T02:01:00.000-08:00

Recently i wanted to install C/C++ developers plugin in eclipse for Android NDK development but weirdly the installation was getting Stuck 48% though, i had no clue why this was happening this was the first time i encountered error like this in eclipse.

I already installed similar setup in windows 7 pc and working fine but when i tried to setup same thing in windows xp with service pack 3 i was getting error the installation/plugin was getting freezed at 48% until we cancelled it manually see below pic.

then i came to know that where the bug was, the issue was Oracle Jre 7 and it was the know issue with JRE so i uninstalled Jre7 and installed JRE 6 and now the plugin installed without any issues it is said that this issue was resolved in JRE 7 Update 2 but for me i was getting error even in Update 2 so i rolled back to JRE6 and it is working fine

some websites blocking back button navigation in browser

2012-01-22T23:27:00.000-08:00

recently i am finding many websites are tricking visitors not to navigate away from the website or webpage by disabling or overriding back button recently i landed up in website which offers mp3 downloads but when i did not find needed in that page when i clicked back button in the browser it was weirdly disallowing me to navigate back though i experienced this type many times but clicking back button twice or continuously for a while i was able to navigate away but this website called clip.dj was appending # at end of URL and overriding back key of browser.

below pic shows that website is automatically overriding back button by appending "#" to the same webpage URL thus making us stay on same webpage

Though sometimes it would be a legitimate redirect issue such as when you was redirected by login or some kind of transaction based navigation but if it was just a normal "search engine to website" or "webiste to website hop" and you cannot still hop back then the present website is intentionally holding you back.

So if you are stuck and you want the search engine result of the previous page then don't worry just click on the history menu from the browser and click on the previous link you came from if you know any other tip or trick to overcome this do share it here

Though i am sure its not a browser issue since i have checked this website(ex clip.dj) on IE, Chrome and firefox which is exhibiting same behavior of disabling browser back button i guess the admin/owner of the website is intentionally doing this.

Frontech gem 2225 driver for windows 7

2012-01-13T08:40:00.000-08:00

Recently i wanted to use my frontech 2225 gem ecam on windows 7 pc but unfortunately after installing the software/drivers from the CD given while purchasing the cam did not worked it was incompatible with windows 7 and was throwing error "The software for this device has been blocked from starting because it is known to have problems with windows. Contact the hardware vendor for a new driver.(code 48) see the below pic

After a lot of search i was finally able to find a compatible device driver software for frontech jil e-cam and this is the first time i felt never to go for desi brands electronic items because they never care to update their driver stack for their products all i found was 40kb driver file in their website and the drivers for frontech ecams come from sonix inc.

Finally i found driver for frontech gem jil 2225 you can download it from 4shared link here just follow below steps to install i tested it on both 32 and 64bit windows 7 OS

download the driver from above link:

1. Right click on the downloaded driver file --> select "properties"

2. select check box "run this program in compatibility mode from drop down menu select "Windows xp(service pack2 or service pack3)

3. after installing restart the system if it asks.

Now your frontech gem e-cam should be working fine and windows 7 ready if you are having any problem at any steps do say here.

how to download Facebook videos ? working solution

2012-01-10T01:45:00.000-08:00

I recently wanted to download a video posted on Facebook when i googled i stumbled across many links on how to download youtube videos but most of the technique or tips such as scripts, extensions and tools i found was either obsolete or not working for some reason and was very complicated which requires accessing third party websites etc and after a a lot of tries and using addons i found few methods/tools which indeed helped me in downloading the Facebook video clips directly instead of redirects and complicated methods, so thought of sharing these tips i found with you guys

Video Download Helper
If you are using Mozilla firefox then Downloader Helper is a must have tool this extension is developed by third party you can find it in the Mozilla official website deck and can be installed depending on your mozilla firefox version.

Download helper not only rips facebook videos but can download videos from various social networking and web portals such as youtube, vimeo, personal sites, and other organizational websites.

Once the addon is installed and firefox is restarted if the webpage contains any video played the download helper icon near address bar automatically start animating and when you click on the drop down list you can see the list of downloadable video's as shown in below pic.

Firefox and Google Chrome Cache viewer

This is being my favourite type of video rip off trick, from last few years now this trick allows to download almost 90% of videos and audios found on the net, the trick is browsers always download a copy of videos into its cache because if user replays video it does not want to download again from the net this comes very handy because browsers save this downloaded video in form of cache until a specified amount of time say few hours to a day, there are lot of cache viewer plugins and tools that can view and download this content from cache such as audio, video, image, documents etc from browsers such as Firefox, chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera etc, below is the pic of cache viewer of mozilla firefox

you can install this cache viewer as an addon or download it Here seperately for a specific browser.

Though there are many other tricks to download video from Facebook and other website's such as giving link in some portals and running grease monkey scripts from Firefox i found above two techniques to be easy and non complicated if you know any other easy way of doing do let me know.

has youtube video views count stopped ?

2011-12-28T11:05:00.000-08:00

Lately i started noticing most of the youtube videos count's/counter are getting frozen regularly one morning last month i watched a video on youtube for some reason i was able to remember the view count but when i opened the same video on youtube again that afternoon it was clear that the view count was not ticking the count was same which i saw in the morning. So what might be the reason? below are few things i came to know after searching on forums and net

Since many people started embedding youtube videos and tweaking youtube embed code to automatically play the video youtube has started fighting back to protect its integrity of services to stop view spamming and its relationship with partners and advertisers.

It is also said that youtube has taken action against the view count to consider only legitimate views say if total view count is 430 and i have viewed same video 200 times youtube automatically considers it as 229.

Some say there is a bug in youtube video view counter mechanism.

What ever it is see the above pic which shows youtube video count remained same even after 6 hours even after i watched the video the comment marked prove the statement, btw do you have more information on it?

Automatically repeat option on youtube

2011-12-23T06:13:00.000-08:00

how to replay or loop videos on youtube? this was the question came to my mind when i stumbled across nice music video which i was not able to resist to hear again and again on youtube today though i never searched for repeat option before today when i searched for it i found youtube video's does not have repeat we have to manually click on replay link.

Searching for the hack on how to repeat youtube videos i found a grease monkey script that exactly does what i need, Loopy for youtube is a Greasemonkey script which all to repeat youtube videos over and over again automatically.

after installing greasemonkey and script you get a extra option/link loop in youtube player window as shown in below pic clicking on it loops video infinitely

Though youtube gives the ability for publishers to embed videos on their own site with inbuilt repeat functionality where user can use the value pair loop =1 in embed script don't know why youtube guys has missed such a important feature in their website.

nostalgic classic magnetic gyro wheel toy of lost decade

2011-12-09T23:23:00.000-08:00

growing up in 80's was very fun atleast for us we used to play whole lot of games on streets than home unlike today's kids who are addicted to computer and indoor games and have become couch potatoes and yes toys and comics was our one stop gap of enjoyment and we were annoying our parents for it alteast every now and then.

I was born and bought up in Bangalore and jayanagar 4th block and gandhibazar was my week end Disney land these places where so much happening it was a great place to shop and streets and shops were filled with all sorts of toys from mini working steam boat, water guns, classic car toys to gyro magnetic wheels etc and cotton candies for time pass it was all in 80's and early 90's.

And today when i walk in same streets all i can find is pirated CD's for Sony psp and Xbox,PC game Cd's and some cheap Chinese toys, and really tons of toy's really was out of chart! whats more i was not able to find even cotton candies on the street, to hell with the internet generation, Internet has really snatched all the fun we had from our present generation kids.

The reason to write this post is while browsing for something i came across below pic

Which triggered my retro memories of this nostalgic piece of toy which i used to have and played all times, really when i tried to find this classic toy in Bangalore i was not able to find one if any of you guys reading this know where we can find it in Bangalore do comment here.

feedburner shows 0 subscribers count bug or penalty?

2011-12-02T21:26:00.000-08:00

Today morning i woke up to see that my website / blog feed subscribers had gone from 600+ to mere 0 in just a night i was very much concerned that 2 years (though my blog is 4 years old i added feed burner 2 years back) of building user base just banished in one night. i logged into my feedburner account but i can see all the subscribers active but unfortunately the count on the widget on my site still shows zero even after cleaning the browser cache and loading on to different browser and system see below pic

but if i try to add new email id / subscriber it was still taking in and feeds are still updating with latest content at this point i came to know that its some temporary glitch in the system and when googled it was no surprise that many people had faced same situation in the past.

Still there is no any information in their official blog what concerns me is i have quite a good number of regular feed readers around 300+ according to stats hoping to send a email to them and lets see what happens, just temporarily removed the display of feed count from the widget will be putting it back when the feed count starts showing correctly.if you are a blogger and have faced the same situation do share with us here.

update 04/12/2011: Finally issue got fixed now i can see the subscriber count as usual.

free google apps email for families or other email hosting

2011-11-27T01:01:00.000-08:00

Is there any free alternative similar to google App's email service for families and friends group? answer is "NO", since google app's reduced free accounts initially from unlimited to 200, 200 to 100, 100 to 50 and finally now from 50 to 10, i started googling for alternate players though i expected there would be someone far better such as Microsoft or Yahoo i was surprised to know no one offered free email service like google did which has the complete cloud such as docs, contacts, calendar, chats etc not just email.

I have been using Google app's for my family domain from past 4 years and i have around 200 users limit and i have filled up around 24, recently one of my friend wanted to setup a similar kind of custom domain for his family and all of them have Android and other smart phones but unfortunately he wanted 18 accounts for his entire family but with the new limitation posed he was unable to do so since buying a premier edition for family is not worth it because most of his family members are non geeks and they just want EMAIL and Rarely Calendar nothing else and he was cribbing to have purchased a domain earlier and set it up...

I think google should increase the limit atleast to 25 for standard users it will be very useful for people with midsized family.

When google allows people to create unlimited email accounts for free on gmail then why they have reduced the limit to such a low number on its google apps? when it is similar and no different from regular gmail except people will have their own domain extension and can choose to create email accounts with their first name and also don't mind ad's in their inbox webpage lately i realized google is purely moving into commercializing everything and is not sticking to their original slogan "Don't be evil" its more or less evil now a days with their rigid policies.

what ever it is i suggested my friend other cheap and best alternatives though not best and par with Google they do offer a decent service such as from Bigrock email hosting service where they charge just 4$/per-month for 50 accounts with 2GB space with pop/imap and even contact sync which is more than enough for a family email solution.

Incorrect domain renewal date on my Google order receipt email

2011-11-19T23:06:00.000-08:00

I just renewed my domain from Google through my credit card but i was amazed to see that in order receipt Google says my domain is registered until DEC 19 2010 this means my domain cease to exist, see the below pic

i think its a bug in the system but my who.is record shows its correctly renewed until 2012 DEC 19 what ever it is when i searched on the Google this issue is faced by Google custom domain owners from several months still Google is no updated this issue.