My Birthday giveaway series continues with this free domain giveaway contest. I had previous announced Free Adsense Voucher Giveaway Contest and Free FaceBook Voucher Giveaway Contest.

This blog has gone quite far and this is all due to support and contribution from my readers. Thank you all for reading and visiting my blog. Now it’s time to treat my readers with something that they will really like. Therefore, as a reward, I’ll be giving away a free domain to 10 lucky readers.

In this free domain giveaway contest i will be giving away 10 free domain names registrations worth more than $100 ! Enter the contest and be one of those lucky winners !

Selection Process:

I’m setting up certain criteria’s to select the winner, which involves assigning points to the various activities of the participant. The point system is as follows:

* Subscribe to my RSS Feed – 10 points

* Be my fan on Facebook – 10 points

* Follow me on twitter at twitter.com/sandeephegde – 10 points

* Tweet the following text on your twitter account – 10 points

Entered #Free #Domain #Names #Contest by @sandeephegde at http://wp.me/pKQld-iO

* Comment on different blog posts on this site with some meaningful lines. No spam like good post etc – 5 points for each comment

* Provide back link to sandeephegde.me from your site – 1 point of every unique visitor coming from your site.

* Write a post on your blog about this contest and provide a track back to this post. – 50 points

* Write a guest post for my blog. You can mail it to contest@sandeephegde.me The contest should be genuinely written, copied content may result in disqualification from the contest. – 50 points if your article is selected.

That’s pretty simple huh?

Note: The winners will be announced on my Birthday, 28th March

Terms & Conditions :

* The domain registration will of 1 year duration. You will have full control over the domain.

* Only .com, .net, .info, .me, .mobi, .uk, .fr, .tel, .be, .eu extensions are allowed to be registered.

* Any spam or non-legitimates entries will be disqualified without notice.

* In case of tie of points between participants, then the winner will be chosen randomly using random.org

* The winners will be announced on the site on 28th March 2010. No personal notification will be sent.

* The winner needs to redeem the domain name before March 31^st. So please stay tuned to this blog to know if you are the winner !

To enter the contest Comment your Name and Twitter Username (or any reliable contact details) below, with an description of how you are going to make use of the domain, if you win !

All The Best

Related posts:

1. Google Adwords Voucher give away
2. Facebook Ads Voucher GiveAway
3. Cheapest Domain Name Registration Service

IT is a world of computers and internet. World Wide Web has become common and reachable to everyone. The internet user can avail information on any subject desired. While you are sitting on your computer, you get connected to the rest of the world in fraction of seconds. You can order or shop anything online. So, you can say that the whole world has come to the screen of your computer on the click of a mouse.

A domain name is like a brand name for your site. Domain name registration is a necessary, easy & important first step in establishing an web site. When registering a domain name, we can choose from a lot of registrars. Registrars is the middlemen who interact with registries on behalf of registrants. The domain name will usually cost you around $10 (Rs.500). The prices vary from registrar to registrar.

My company dotCORD also provides domain name registration and web hosting services at dotcord.net. As an special promo we shall provide the cheapest domain name registration service available online. We are providing .com domains for just Rs.299 and .in domains for just Rs. 199 ! our domain registration  prices are the cheapest on the internet.

The Cheapest domain name pricing offered by dotCORD:

.COM – Rs.299

.IN – Rs.199

.CO.IN – Rs.199

.MOBI – Rs. 399

.INFO – Rs. 299

For more details about pricing visit www.dotcord.net

Top 10 reasons to buy domain names with dotCORD !

1. Cheapest Domain Name Registration

Save more than 40% of the actual cost. No hidden charges ! No commitments to buy other products !

2. Various tlds available

We offer domain name registration in various tlds of your choice. You could buy .com, .in, .mobi etc.We also provide an name suggestion tool to simplify your task of finding a good domain name.

To get the complete list of tlds visit : www.dotcord.net

3. Multiple Payment Options

We understand different people wish to choose different payment methods. Don’t worry if you don’t have credit card, you could pay us offline too. You can choose one of the following options to pay:

• PayPal
• Online Banking
• DD
• Cheque
• Direct deposit into our bank account
• Western Union Money Transfer
• Cash !

4. Local & Global Support

All our services are available globally. We are based in Belgaum, India. Indian’s have an advantage of getting local support. No more international call and wait times ! You could reach us on our number with minimal expenditures. We are also there to help you even in Hindi!

We are also provide support through social media sites. Yes now you can chat with us right from your Facebook account

Twitter : http://twitter.com/dotcord

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/dotcord

5.Privacy protection

Protect the information that you display in the WHOIS details of your Domain Name with Privacy Protection. Although most providers charge anywhere between $6 – $14 for this service, we offer you Privacy Protection absolutely FREE of cost! You can safeguard your personal information from spammers, data harvesters, etc. ensuring that your WHOIS information is never misused.

6. Domain Theft Protection

Domain Theft Protection is a security service offered to provide an additional layer of security to Domains. This FREE service allows you to lock your Domain Names, guarding them against unauthorized Transfers.

7. Free DNS service

Any product you buy from us, comes with complete control to manage the DNS records for the associated domain, absolutely FREE of cost! Plus, our FREE DNS service is hosted on globally distributed and highly redundant infrastructure making it one of the most reliable in the industry. Manage SOA, A, AAAA, MX, CNAME, SRV and NS records – with all updates reflecting instantaneously.

8. Free Domain forwarding

• Blazing fast performance – Nothing beats the request serving speed of our domain forwarding service.
• Hide the destination URL – You can hide the destination URL in any domain forwarding order by enabling URL Masking. That way any long destination URLs remain hidden from the surfer and your brand identity remains consistent.
• Wild carded Sub-domain Forwarding and Path Forwarding – You can setup wild carded forwarding such that each sub domain (eg http://jobs.yourdomain.com) forwards to independent destinations automatically. Also you can enable path information to be replicated in the destination URL such that http://www.yourdomain.com/path1/path2 gets forwarded to http://destinationURL/path1/path2
• Search Engine Optimization and backward compatibility – You can set the <HEAD> tag content, in order to provide <META> tags and <TITLES> for search engine optimization. You can also set the <NOFRAMES> tag content for compatibility with browsers that do not support frames.

9. Free Mail Forwarding

Make your Email Addresses look professional with mail@yourdomain.com  Accept and forward mails sent to your Domain Name to a free email service like gmail/hotmail using this handy Free Service.

• Unlimited Mail Forwards: You can add unlimited mail forwards each forwarding to a different address
• Catch-All Accounts: Create a catch-all account and forward all mails sent to your Domain Name to a single email address

10. Easy-to-use Control Panel

Any Domain owner knows that Domain Names need to be managed on a continuous basis, which makes a simple and effective Control Panel absolutely essential. The Control Panel that we offer Free of cost, make changing contact information, modifying name servers, renewing the Domain Name, etc. extremely easy.

This offer will be available only upto 30th March. So hurry up and register your domain names now !

Related posts:

1. Get a Free Domain Name !
2. Indian Express writes about dotCORD

Sponsored Tweets is a new Twitter advertising platform that connects advertisers with Tweeters. Advertisers can create sponsored conversations on Twitter. Tweeters can earn money for spreading the word. Think of it as the Pay Per Tweet version of Pay Per Post.

Who can join?

Your Twitter account must be at least 60 days old, have at least 100 followers and 100 status updates to be visible in searches to advertisers. However, advertisers can still explicitly make you offers.

I have joined Sponsored Tweets around a month ago. After working around with many twitter monetization programs Sponsored Tweets seems to be the best ! Sponsored Tweets is the easiest way to make money from twitter.

It takes few seconds to write a tweet for a advertiser and they will pay you according to your followers and other criteria. I’m getting paid $1 for each tweet. I have earned around $18 so far.

Your tweet price is based on many factors, like number of followers, number of tweeters you’re following, the age of your account, how often you tweet, etc. Sponsored Tweets will give you a recommend price you should charge but you are not bounded by it and can set whatever price you want. I recommend you aim high and lower the price if you don’t get any bites!

If you are already not a member of Sponsered Tweets than it a try

Related posts:

1. Twitter – What are you doing?
2. SMStweet – Tweet using SMS in India
3. Mayank Sharma – Brain Behind SMStweet.in

I have explained briefly about Your Freedom in my last post “Your-Freedom – Bypass Restrictive Firewalls and Filters”. In this post we shall see how to configure Your Freedom and use Your Freedom software, with live screenshots and details. If you have any queries please comment at the end.

1 Registration process

Your first step in using the service is to register on web site. You need to visit http://www.your-freedom.net/ and create an account there. There is a link underneath the login and password form fields in the red part of the banner.

On the registration page, choose a username (preferably one that is not likely already used) and provide a password.

Once you’ve filled everything in, click on the “Create account” button. You will be asked to confirm your details by clicking on “Create account now”.

Within a few minutes you should receive an email containing an activation link. Activate your account by clicking on the link in the email (or cut&paste it into your browser).

What if you cannot access the web page because it’s blocked? Well, it’s a hen and egg problem then. Either ask someone else to create an account for you (or do it from somewhere else) and modify it later, or obtain the client software from another source than our server, and use the username “unregistered” and the password “unregistered” in it. This account will only provide access to Your Freedom web page, however. Alternatively, if you are able to send an email to the customer support, ask them to create an account for you. Just write to info@your-freedom.net telling them about your problem, suggest a username (please limit yourself to ASCII letters and numbers, dashes and underscores) and a password, and ask them to email you the client software (please state which type you’d like, read getting and installing client software ). If all the odds are against you and you can’t get the client software from anywhere else they’ll mail you a CD as well.

2 Getting and installing the client software

Once you’ve created an account you may use it to log in on the web page. This will give you access to the Download section of the page. Log in, then click on “Downloads”.  There are several ways to run the Your Freedom client, and consequently there is more than one download option:

• Windows Installer Windows users who already have a suitable Java Runtime Environment3 installed on their system and who have enough rights to install software should be able to use this version. The download is about 1 megabyte in size. If you are unable to download files ending in .exe, try to copy the link location and paste it in the URL field of a new browser window, then change the .exe to .txt.

• Windows Full Installer This version comes bundled with a JRE of its own so there are no prerequisites. Every Windows user should be able to use this one, provided that you may install software on your PC. The download is rather fat, about 28 megabytes. Again, this is an .exe file, try changing the ending to .txt if this is a problem. A benefit of this version is that it’s compiled to native code and will probably consume less resources.

Both Windows installer versions are installed by running the .exe file. Just follow the instructions in the installer and you should be done in a minute.

If you are not running Windows or if you cannot install software on your PC, your best choice is the Java archive version. Download the ZIP file and extract the contents into a folder to which you may write. This could also be a memory stick, or a CDROM, by the way. Then run the Java interpreter with the “freedom.jar” file. With Windows it’s usually enough if you double-click on the JAR file, but you may want to open a “cmd” window instead, “cd” to the directory and run “javaw –jar freedom.jar” instead. On Unix boxes you’d normally use “java –jar freedom.jar” or “kaffe –jar freedom.jar” or something similar; Unix users normally know.

Your Freedom also offers a Mac OSX installer version but  it might be less current than the others. You should be able to use the Java archive version on your Mac without problems – OSX is built on Unix and ships with a pre-installed JRE.

Alternatively  all files are also available from http://mediafire.com/yourfreedom.

Here is the screenshots of installation of Your freedom on Windows 7 operating System :

Generally, the Java archive version of the Your Freedom client should run on every computer that has a suitable JRE – and enough memory. We love to hear from you if you’ve managed to run it on an exotic piece of hardware (or in an unusual place)!

3 Connecting for the first time

When you start the Your Freedom client application for the first time, you’ll be presented with a “wizard”. It’s safe not to use it and enter all required information manually, but if you are unsure, give it a try first. Manual configuration may be required in difficult connection scenarios.

Now let’s assume that you are using the wizard. It will first present a Welcome page:

Do as you are told and click on the “Next” button. You’ll see this page:

If your Internet connection is through a web proxy, enter the details here. If you are unsure, try to click “Next” first. If all you get is an empty list of available servers like this:

(ignore the “auto-choose best” part) you need to figure out about your web proxy (or configure everything manually, e.g. if you want to use an FTP proxy!). If you get this:

then you’ve filled in the proxy details properly but you need to authenticate on the proxy. Click on “Next”…

… and fill in suitable login credentials. In many cases this will be your Windows Domain login (don’t forget to fill in the domain as well!). Just try until it works, you can click “Next” to try.

If you see this page:

it means that you have not provided a working proxy configuration. Click on “Back” and modify the hostname/IP address and/or the port setting. Many proxies “listen” on port 80, 8080 or 3128, to name the most popular ports. Check your web browser’s configuration, it should be able to tell you.

Oh by the way, if you find that the wizard has the proxy details already filled in, then it’s not magic – it just found them in your PC’s registry and probably has made life easier for you.

Let’s assume you’ve been able to make it work. (If not, please ask a knowledge person around you how you can use the web proxy, or try a manual configuration). It worked if you see something like this:

It’s important that you see a “yes” or a number in any of the columns HTTP, HTTPS, FTP or UDP. A “yes” means that the client has been able to use this protocol to connect to the server using the default port settings, a number would mean that it has been able to connect but on a different port, and a “no” means that the protocol could not be used to connect to this server. The results are sorted by preference (a number between 0 and 10), it indicates how well the server fits your requirements (if you’ve set any). Choose a server (any will do for now, unless it’s all “no” – don’t use “auto-choose best”), then click on “Next”.

On this page, enter your Your Freedom username and password; it’s the same you used to download the client from our web page. Click on “Next”.

It seems you’re done now! Click on “Save and Exit”. The main window of the Your Freedom client should now look like this:

Note that the client just doesn’t know anything about the server and your account’s profile before you’ve connected to the server, that’s why some of the values seem to be somewhat odd (including the bandwidth – it’s not unlimited unless you’ve bought a package). Click on “Start connection” and you should see something like this after a few seconds:

Note that all the details are now filled in, and the bandwidth reads “64.0k”. That’s kilobits, about the speed of an ISDN connection or a bit faster than with a high-speed modem. Click on “Account Profile” now.

This panel contains your account details. Without a package, you may not use any special servers (just the default ones), your bandwidth is limited, your maximum number of simultaneous streams is rather low and you may not relay connections from other PCs that use your PC as proxy. Your server connection will be terminated after 60 minutes (but you may reconnect when it happens). No server ports are assigned to you so none of them are forwarded to you. But at least, there are no access restrictions, you may access everything on the Internet.4

OK, time to configure your applications. Once you’ve set up at least a web browser to use Your Freedom the main objective should be reached: you should be able to access the web freely!

4 Configure applications – Automatically

Windows users can simply click on the “Applications” tab and see something like this:

This is a list of applications whose configurations can be modified automatically by Your Freedom. The ones that are installed on your system have working checkboxes, the other ones are greyed out. Tick the ones you wish to use with Your Freedom, then click “OK”. You’ll see something like this:

Hope it’s all successful! Then click “OK”. To restore the previous configuration of your applications, choose “Restore”, then tick the ones you would like to restore, and click “OK”. Note that applications that you’ve configured to use Your Freedom will only work properly if the Your Freedom connection to the server is up and running. Also, don’t forget to restore all your settings before de-installing the Your Freedom client!

To manually configure your applications, have a look at the Ports tab first:

This tells you that your local PC is now acting as a SOCKS4/5 proxy on port 1080 and as a Web Proxy on port 8080. To change these values, untick the service, then modify the port, then re-activate (this can be done on-the-fly!). “Relay for others” will only work with some packages.

If for some reason you cannot configure your applications from within the Your Freedom client, you need to manually configure them to use web proxy “localhost” on port “8080” or SOCKS proxy “localhost” on port “1080” (if you’ve got the choice, use SOCKS version 5).

Where are I find more details?

Visit the Docs & FAQ’s section at http://www.your-freedom.net/index.php?id=doc

Stay tuned to this blog to know more about You Freedom and similar software’s. Do not forget to Subscribe to my RSS Feeds and follow me on Twitter.

If you have any queries please comment below.

Related posts:

1. Your-Freedom – Bypass Restrictive Firewalls and Filters
2. Ultra Surf – The Best Proxy Software – Bypass any Internet filter
3. How to bypass Cyberoam Client – Hack Cyberoam

Adbrite powers the world’s most trusted and transparent marketplace for digital advertising. Serving over 253 million impressions a day on over 116,097 sites, AdBrite is The Internet’s Ad Marketplace®. AdBrite has created a completely transparent and effective advertising exchange focused on maximizing ROI for advertisers and publisher yield through best in class targeting and optimization technology. AdBrite’s auction-driven pricing, real-time bidding and API functionality, combined with a self-service account management interface, gives our customers unparalleled access to campaign information and total control.

With my experience, I would say Adbrite is the best alternative to Google Adsense. Also Google Adsense and Adbrite can both go hand in hand to yield you better profits. The key differentiation of Google Adsense and Adbrite are as follows :

1. Registration

Google Adsense has an stringent approval system to begin with.You need at least 7 days or more to get approved. Adbrite, approves your account instantly! You can signup for Adbrite and start displaying the ads on your site within few minutes.

2. Customer Support

No doubt, Adbrite have a better costumer support than Google Adsense. Google Adsense is based on community support, which is not as efficient and user friendly as of dedicated support staff of Adbrite.

3. Ads

Google Adsense is more contextual. The quality of Google Adsense goes unmatched. While Adbrite is also quite good enough(may not be as contextual as Google Adsense). Adbrite is not contextual like Adsense, so the click through rate is a bit low.

4. Flexibility

With Google adsense you can not sell Ad space in your site, but with Adbrite you can create your own Price and Packages. With Adbrite you have more flexibility over your ad. With Adbrite the seller has a great advantage showing what the site provides. As unique visitors, Page views, Origin of traffic, Average cost per click (eCPC), Site Category, Alexa rank, Repurchase rate, Conversion Score, AdBrite since, What CPC can I expect?, Ad zone description, and much more.

5. Payment

Google Adsense has the minimum payout amount of 100$ while Adbrite has a low minimum payout amount of  5$. Google Adsense pays in has option to pay in various currencies (like Indian Rupees) and pays out every month.  AdBrite issues payments in US Dollars, two months (net-60) after you accrue them.

6. Popularity

Google Adsense wins hands on. Adbrite is surely next to it.

7. Ads Format

Google Adsense have a lot of ads format. In addition to text and banner ads, AdBrite offers advanced options like Full Page Ad, BritePic, and Inline ads. These formats will allow you to show high-value ads without losing site real estate—and the multimedia formats let you take advantage of the photos and video clips on your site. Bottom line, you’ll earn more than with the standard options provided by most ad networks.. Adbrite also allows you to display ads of other networks(say Google Adsense) beating a specified cpm.

8. Performance

Google Adsense is much better when it comes to performance. Initially Google will start displaying the ads in not more than 10 minutes while Adbrite takes more than 24hours.The load times of Google Adsense are found to be better.

9. ToS

Google Adsense is known for its strict TOS. Google Adsense, the great disadvantage can be some publisher are banned without real reason.  On the other hand Adbrite is not that strict about its TOS.  I have not heard an event of account banned by Adbrite till date.

10. Other

• Google Adsense will not allow to modify the ad code to suit your needs. While adbrite you can play around with the ad code as you wish !

• You can use Google Adsense and Adbrite both together, on the same site without any problem.

So, to start with here are a few steps to maximize your Adbrite earnings.

1. Un-check the auto-approve of ads, and don’t approve ads below 10 cents.
2. Give a nice description of your website, remember most of the advertisers you will catch from the Adbrite market place.
3. Get the big rectangles, as that is the best performing ads for any network.
4. Put up as many tags as you can, in the keywords field. Use the dictionary if you run out of keywords.
5. Make the color of the ads text and background same as rest of your website.
6. If the ads are a banner, only approve the really high CPC ads, like 50 cents or more, and for CPM ads banner, choose max you can.

These basic steps will improve your earnings a lot. Let comment your opinions/views about Adbrite.

No related posts.

Happy Valentines Day!!

Or for some of you, not so happy valentines day.

For me? Oh well, it doesn’t effect me all that much. Its just another day

Valentines day for some people is a day of love, joy, unity, and happiness . But for others its a day for pressure, tears, and heartbreak. Sometimes we’re all so quick to jump and forget about those that really don’t have anyone. And for that, I tell you all Happy Valentines Day!

Related posts:

1. Happy Republic Day
2. Happy Sankranti
3. Happy New Year 2010

About Maha Shivratri :
Maha Shivratri or Maha Sivaratri or Shivaratri or Sivaratri (Night of Shiva or “Great Night of Shiva”) is a festival celebrated every year on the 13th night/14th day in the Krishna Paksha (waning moon) of the month of Maagha (as per Shalivahana or Gujarati Vikrama) or Phalguna (as per Vikrama) in the Hindu Calendar (that is, the night before and day of the new moon). The festival is principally celebrated by offerings of Bael (Bilva) leaves to the Lord Shiva, all day fasting and an all night long vigil.

Per scriptural and discipleship traditions, the penances are performed in order to gain boons in the practice of Yoga and meditation, in order to reach the goal more swiftly and avoid rebirth.

Related posts:

1. Happy Sankranti

The latest Buzz around the internet is all about Google’s latest product “ Google Buzz”

“Google Buzz is easily the company’s boldest attempt yet to build a social network. Imagine taking elements of facebook, Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare, Yelp, and other social services, and shoving them together into one package. Now imagine covering that package in a layer that looks a lot like FriendFeed. Now imagine shoving that package inside of Gmail. That’s Buzz. If Google Wave is the future, Google Buzz is the present.”

Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It’s built right into Gmail, so you don’t have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch — it just works. If you think about it, there’s always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. Google focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don’t have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you’re sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.

Google Buzz will also be available to businesses and schools using Google Apps, with added features for sharing within organizations.

On your phone, Google Buzz is much more than just a small screen version of the desktop experience. Mobile devices add an important component to sharing: location. Posts tagged with geographical information have an extra dimension of context — the answer to the question “where were you when you shared this?” can communicate so much. And when viewed in aggregate, the posts about a particular location can paint an extremely rich picture of that place.

If you like this article do follow me Google Buzz at http://www.google.com/profiles/sandeephegde88. Also don’t forget to Buzz this article

Related posts:

1. Google Voice – One number for all your calls and SMS
2. Getting Started with Google Apps
3. Google Wave invite giveaway!

Is your Internet access somehow restricted? Are some web pages not accessible to you, or are you unable to run applications because of such restrictions? Then Your Freedom is for you. Although the techniques used by Your Freedom to break through such restrictions are fairly complicated, it is not difficult to use.

Your Freedom is a Connectivity Service that allows you to overcome connectivity restrictions imposed upon you by your network administrators, your provider or your country. It also provides a certain level of anonymization, and it hides from your administrators and other nosy people close to you what you are doing on the Internet.

How does it work?

It works by turning your local PC into a web proxy and a SOCKS proxy that can be used by your applications (web browser, games, whatever). Instead of connecting directly, applications can send connection requests to these “proxy servers” provided by the client part of the Your Freedom software running on your PC, and the client part will then forward these requests to the server part running on our connectivity servers through a connection protocol that is still available to you and through which the client part can reach the server part. It tunnels through firewalls, web proxies, FTP proxies and the like. Sounds complicated? Well it is, but the good news is you don’t have to worry about it, that’s their job.

Have a look at the picture below. The box on the left is your PC. Let’s say the restrictive firewall won’t let you access hotmail.com and you want to read your private email from your workplace; fire up the Your Freedom client and let it connect to one of our servers, configure your web browser to use it, and your web browser will be able to connect to hotmail.com by connecting to the Your Freedom client, who will forward the requests to one of our servers, who will then forward the request to the hotmail.com server. The replies from the hotmail.com server will take the same route backwards.

What does it cost?

A fundamental service is provided for free. It is restricted in bandwidth and the number of simultaneous streams, and there is a time limit for the connection between the client and the servers (but you may reconnect immediately).

Your Freedom provide upgrade packages that reduce or remove the bandwidth restriction and that allow for more simultaneous streams, and there are server ports that you can use to allow inbound connections to your PC or another PC in your network. The packages are available as one month, three months, six months or twelve months upgrades, and come in three different levels that we call BasicFreedom, EnhancedFreedom, and TotalFreedom.

What can I use it for?

Your Freedom can be used to overcome:

• Protocol restrictions If you cannot use certain applications or services because these applications cannot connect to the Internet in the usual way, Your Freedom may be able to help you. For example, if your favorite online game does not work in your place because someone decided that you shouldn’t play it, then try Your Freedom. Games known to work well include: WOW, EVE, Counterstrike and many others. You may not use P2P protocols because someone thinks it’s illegal1? Most P2P clients work nicely with Your Freedom, and you can even get a server port, which gives you a “high id”.

• Blacklists You may not visit certain web pages? Try Your Freedom. It turns your local PC into an unrestricted web proxy that provides access to all web pages that are generally accessible.

• Time restrictions Some users have said that they use Your Freedom to avoid time restrictions. In most cases, existing connections are not disrupted by such restrictions, and therefore all they need to do is to start the Your Freedom client before the restriction is in place, and keep it open. The connection between the client and the server part is persistent (this depends on the connection protocol, however).

More details can be found at the official website : www.your-freedom.net

This post will be followed by an how-to tutorial of using Your Freedom Software. Stay tuned to this blog to know more about You Freedom and similar software’s. Do not forget to Subscribe to my RSS Feeds and follow me on Twitter.

Related posts:

1. Getting Started with Your-Freedom Software
2. Ultra Surf – The Best Proxy Software – Bypass any Internet filter
3. How to bypass Cyberoam Client – Hack Cyberoam

As I have stated in my earlier post SMStweet – Tweet using SMS in India, I’m finally here with the interview of Mayank Sharma, the brain behind SMStweet. It took me quite a few days to get the information from Mayank Sharma, due to his busy schedules. Living it asides here we go with my interaction with Mayank Sharma.

* Let know more about you.

I have started a company called ezeecoupons. We intend to provide discount and offers over mobile phone as a simple SMS. People will be able to search for discount vouchers in stores that they are interested in. We have launched a prototype version of it in a Bangalore locality called Jayanagar. I like to read a lot love trekking. But these days most of my time is taken up by my daughter Raina, so don’t have time for other things.

* How and when did you get idea of starting smstweet?

Twitter was initially intended to be used on mobile phone originally. The simplicity of twitter made it so addictive that people started using on the internet as well. And it is on the internet that it found its adoption. If you start tweeting, you realize that it is so addictive that you want to keep on doing it even when you are not in front of your computer. Hence the need for it had always been. And then sometime in October I got introduced to a friend who told me about smsgupshups API’s. The moment I heard about it, I immediately grabbed an account there, and SMSTweet was born. Call it by bad luck or what, but the day I was testing out my application I heard the big news about Airtel providing Twitter access on mobile phone at 1 rupee.

* How did you get started?

As I said, I just got a demo account with smsgupshup and in couple of days implemented a basic version of SMSTweet. Thereafter just fixed bugs and made it more robust.

* How is smstweet built?

SMSTweet runs on Google Appengine. I used python to code the entire application. SMSTweet uses SMSGupshup’s SMS gateway to receive messages. I map the phone number from which the message is received to the correct Twitter user and post it on their behalf using Twitter’s open API.

* How was response of people initially?

Initial response was quite disheartening. Apparently no one in my circle of friends was as twitadict as I was and hence no one was actually using it. Almost a month later couple of people found out about it and they started using it. Most of them blogged about that helped SMSTweet reach out to a wide audience. In one sense it grew virally from that point onwards.

* Who are the key people/supporters behind?

From technical point of view, there is no one supporting me. It’s a fairly small piece of software so I don’t think I require any help from that perspective. Rohit helped me out with the design of website. He also reviews my code and keeps me honest with the code that I write. Other than that a large part of credit goes to all the bloggers who blogged about it. Seriously if not for those bloggers, hardly a handful of people would have know about SMSTweet.

* Why have not you provided local numbers beyond Mumbai and Bangalore?

These local numbers actually do not belong to me. They belong to SMSGupshup and I am just sharing it with them. It is upto SMSgupshup to add more cities so that a lot more people can use it as local SMS. I have contacted SMSGupshup and they said they will tell me if they decide to add more cities. But I don’t think lack of local numbers is a hindrance. Most of the mobile operators provide free local/STD sms plans for negligible account. So if you have one, you can virtually use SMSTweet for Free.

* What are your future plans?

I will keep on adding features as and when I have time. The usability of SMSTweet is quite restricted as the application does not initiate a SMS to a user. It only listens to SMS from users and responds to it. I have made this conscious decision because from the day one, I had decided I’ll not spend money on this tool. Google Appengine is free for me. SMSGupshup charges nominal amount to keep the account alive. And I don’t send out any outgoing SMS’es from my account. In this restrictive environment it is quite hard to innovate. But let’s see if we get some good ideas, I will implement them.

* Anything else you would like share with our readers

I would really like to thank everyone who has promoted SMSTweet either through blog or on  twitter. Without any marketing budget that is the only way to reach out to your audience. So I hope people keep on using it, send me feedback and if some one gets a wacko idea, share it with me so I can see if I can implement it.

This was my first experience of taking someone’s interview(anyways had experience of being interviewed !). This was an essential step to keep by blog unique. The interview series will continue in the coming days, letting you aware of unknown personalities. Your feedback and suggestions are welcome. Do not forget to Subscribe to my RSS Feeds and follow me on Twitter.

Related posts:

1. SMStweet – Tweet using SMS in India
2. Twitter – What are you doing?
3. Google Voice – One number for all your calls and SMS