How are they Different ?

The term Internet evolved from Inter-Networking. It is a massive super-network of millions of networks built all across the globe. It actually represents the overall network infrastructure comprising of Fibre optic cables, routers, switches, gateways, computers among other network constituents. Every node(computer) on internet is accessible by every other node connected to the Internet and that’s how Internet is primarily used for communication and Information sharing.

There are some well defined Internet protocols ...]]> Internet and World Wide Web are terms that are generally used synonymously but there are much different in actual meaning.

How are they Different ?

The term Internet evolved from Inter-Networking. It is a massive super-network of millions of networks built all across the globe. It actually represents the overall network infrastructure comprising of Fibre optic cables, routers, switches, gateways, computers among other network constituents. Every node(computer) on internet is accessible by every other node connected to the Internet and that’s how Internet is primarily used for communication and Information sharing.

There are some well defined Internet protocols for performing several purposes such as data transfer, remote access, information sharing using Internet. ‘World Wide Web’ employs Hyper Text Transfer Protocol(HTTP) to facilitate Information sharing on Internet. In other words, ‘Web’ is simply an Information sharing model, built on top of the internet.

In simpler words

‘World Wide Web’ (WWW) or simply ‘Web’ is basically a subset of Internet. It represents the largest sub-network on Internet, which employs HTTP protocol and lets us access information published on a Webpage via a software called a Web browser.

Similar to World Wide Web, there are other sub-sets of Internet as well such as

• e-mail (Protocols: SMTP,POP,MAPI)
• FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
• Telnet (Remote login)

When you’re using an Instant Messenger (IM) for an online chat, you’re actually using Internet but not the World Wide Web.

According to some web stats, approx. 4 websites(including blogs) are created every second on internet. Now, as hundreds of millions of sites are already existant on web and millions of new sites are being created every week or so, the consumer ...]]> Web hosts are countless on web today. Whether you require a shared hosting or a private one, almost every host has all sorts of hosting packages for their customers. And one major reason why Hosting providers are mushrooming so fast these days is simply because of “Demand and Supply rule“.

According to some web stats, approx. 4 websites(including blogs) are created every second on internet. Now, as hundreds of millions of sites are already existant on web and millions of new sites are being created every week or so, the consumer market for Web hosting Industry is turning really huge, which is ultimately leading to more and more Hosting service providers on web.

From consumer’s point of view, such mushrooming of web hosting services is actually good, as more competition is leading to cheaper services for the end customer. This is quite evident from the fact that a shared hosting account in the year 2002 used to cost as much as a dedicated hosting account as on today.

As most of the websites on web do not drive overwhelming traffic(which would require robust and dedicated servers), 95-98% of hosted websites on paid hosting services are on Shared basis. Shared hosting packages are cheap, reliable and perfect for a starter website.

Just in case you’re a rookie(a starter) on web and looking for a cheap(or cheapest) Web Hosting service to host your website, PickaWeb may suit you really well. The plans are quite cheap(seems cheaper than the usual cheap hosting plans). The hosting service is UK based. Go check out the plans yourself !

Check out the newly introduced and enhanced feature set in Firefox 3.5

Private Browsing

This feature has been introduced in the latest version of Firefox. ‘Private browsing’  enables users to surf internet without leaving any traces in ...]]> Mozilla has pushed its own limits further with its latest release, version 3.5 of Firefox. Firefox 3.5 has just been released(available for download here) and after having a hands-on experience with the latest Firefox version and its enhanced feature-pack, Firefox 3.5 is certainly looking miles ahead of its competitors at the moment.

Check out the newly introduced and enhanced feature set in Firefox 3.5

Private Browsing

This feature has been introduced in the latest version of Firefox. ‘Private browsing’  enables users to surf internet without leaving any traces in browsing history of the web browser. It was the only feature which was already being offered in Google Chrome and Apple Safari but missing out in Firefox until the latest Firefox 3.5 release.

Countless Add-ons

Firefox users can now pick from over 6000 Add-ons to enhance their web browsing experience. A huge population of web services have already created their Firefox Add-ons and thousands are in the pipeline.

Enhanced Smart Location Bar

As you keep using Firefox for a while, it learns from your browsing behaviour and starts suggesting you on the basis of your past surfing activity. Whenever you type in a term, the Autocomplete function includes possible matching sites from your browsing history, as well as sites you’ve bookmarked. This saves you both time and efforts. This feature has been enhanced in the latest Firefox release.

Improved Performance

With regular clean-up of unused memory, removal of  hundreds of memory leaks and most importantly, the use of Tracemonkey Javascript engine, the latest version of Mozilla Firefox keeps memory usage under strict control. Firefox 3.5 is much faster than its previous version because of improved Page rendering and layout engine.

One-Click Bookmarking

There’s a ’star’ icon at the end of the address bar, which needs to be clicked only once for the particular website to be bookmarked. If clicked twice, Firefox will show the folder where the bookmark has been stored and will also give you the option to ‘tag’ your bookmark. You can rename the folder according to your choice or suitability of the website for organizing your bookmarked websites in a proper way.

Instant Web Site ID

If there’s a website where you are supposed to enter your financial data such as credit card credentials, it is advisable to verify if the website is an authentic and legitimate website or not. You can now check out the site’s Web site ID, another authentication measure, by clicking on the favicon of the website. This gets you an instant identification of the website being viewed.

But there’s another conventional method of Brand promotion, probably the oldest and most effective of all: Brand promotion via Courtesy gifts. On promotional ...]]> For any enterprise or business, no matter how small or big it is, the brand value matters the most. Either the nature of dealing is Business to Business(B2B) or Business to Customer(B2C), if the Brand is recognizable to the end customer, the company will keep getting business. That’s the sole reason why companies spend millions of dollars on advertising their brand via Television, Internet and other media channels.

But there’s another conventional method of Brand promotion, probably the oldest and most effective of all: Brand promotion via Courtesy gifts. On promotional events and meetups, many businesses serve concerned business associates, their own employees and end customers with self-branded gifts such as stationary, calendar etc.

But in today’s digital age, a more appropriate and suitable corporate gift would be something that would serve a great purpose for any individual, something like a Flash Drive. A corporate gift such as a Flash drive is undoubtly a gift which will be used by the recipient on a daily basis and can also be pre-loaded with company’s presentation, product catalogue and other promotional material before distribution. And it’s not you(business owners) but FlashDealer, who will bother to bring you, a Customized Flash drive highlighting your brand.

At FlashDealer, companies can get their self-branded custom Flash drive made, as per their design specifications. Companies can also pick any of the suggested/popular customizations on FlashDealer.

What we like about FlashDealer is their approach of giving complete freedom to their customers(Business owners) to go for any level of customization they want. Be it the color, shape or design, customization of USB drive has no limitation at FlashDealer.

If you’re a firm or a company, spending money on other sort of other (useless) promotional gifts, Custom Flash Drives should be given a try.

Disclosure: This write-up is sp0ns0r-ed.

PICMG(PCI Industrial Computers Manufacturers Group) is basically a consortium of over 240 companies(majorly OEMs) across the globe who work together, for the sole purpose of offering standard specifications to equipment vendors , thereby minimizing costs, increasing availability and  reducing overall time to market.

PICMG standardizes ...]]> Most of the industrial sectors have their own alliance or consortium, that promotes collaborative research, fast evolution and Standardization. PICMG performs a similar role for the “Telecom. and Industrial computing industry”.

PICMG(PCI Industrial Computers Manufacturers Group) is basically a consortium of over 240 companies(majorly OEMs) across the globe who work together, for the sole purpose of offering standard specifications to equipment vendors , thereby minimizing costs, increasing availability and  reducing overall time to market.

PICMG standardizes various technical specifications, one of which is strictly followed by AdvancedMC Cards. AMC(AdvancedMC) cards are a kind of PCBs(Printed Circuit Boards) which have been designed to cater to the ever-growing needs of “Carrier grade” communications equipment. Officially, the specification designation is AMC.x (where ‘x’ ranges from 0 to 4).

As its an advisable practice for any manufacturer to come up with mulitple variants of the hardware being produced, there are four different connector types available on the carrier card. They are as follows:

Connector Type: B

One module card that uses only half the available pins, 1-85

Connector Type: B+

One module card that uses only all the available pins, 1-170

Connector Type: AB

Two adjacent module cards, both of which using only half the available pins, 1-85

Connector Type: A+B+

One module card that uses only half the available pins, 1-85

When an AMC connector is plugged in, the order with which various traces of AdvancedMC connector become active, if known precisely, can facilitate Hot Swapping(component replacement without interrupting the regular functioning of the system).

AdvancedMC is often used in conjunction with AdvancedTCA. AdvancedTCA (Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture) is a carrier grade backplane and interconnect specification created by PICMG. It has been defined under the PICMG 3.x standards. In general, AMC Card attaches onto an AdvancedTCA card(relatively bigger).

Components such as AdvancedMC and AdvancedTCA are actually the building blocks of an SBC(Single Board Computer). An SBC is an entire computer built on a single circuit board. Manufacturers such as Kontron manufactures Embedded Computer Technology and supplies OEMs and System integrators with hardware components such as PC/104 SBC and other peripherals.

Overall, this industry appears fast evolving & competitive with innovations happening every single moment. It also means that market won’t give a second chance to any company that doesn’t keep up with the Demand and Supply.

The variety of malicious programs which are generally referred as Malwares have their unique and deceptive ways of infecting the targeted computer. The severity of Malwares varies ...]]> Malware is a general term, used to define a spectrum of intrusive and damaging software programs, which are intentionally developed to harm the target computer in various possible ways. Malwares may cause transfer of user’s personal information & surfing behaviour, corrupting other applications residing on the computer, disrupting smooth functioning of computer, over-consuming computer resources, complete hack of the system, among many other effects.

The variety of malicious programs which are generally referred as Malwares have their unique and deceptive ways of infecting the targeted computer. The severity of Malwares varies abruptly from one type to another. The various types of Malwares have been elucidated below.

Spywares: As the name suggests, these programs are primarily meant for spying on the target computer. Spywares stealthily record user’s private information such as browsing activity details and even ‘login details’ to visited sites. The most fatal spyware, referred as Banker trojans are particularly developed to steal data related to Online Banking.

Virus: It is a computer program that can multiply itself and cause a mass re-production of the malicious program within no time, consequently infecting the whole computer without getting into knowledge of the user. A computer virus can only spread further if the host file is transferred to other computers.

Worms: A kind of malicious program which actively transmits itself over a network without any user intervention. As it doesn’t require the end user to simulate or execute any software or application, the level of vulnerability becomes much higher in this case.

Trojans: Trojan horses are basically those disguising programs which first appear as a desireable application, but when executed, result into some unintentional activity such as ‘file deletion’ or ‘virus distribution’. They are known to be the most deceptive Malware type.

Rootkits: It often happens that the user realises some malicious activity and immediately runs Anti-virus scan to clear any possibility of malware invasion. This doesn’t give enough time for the virus to self-replicate to an alarming stage. Rootkits are basically meant to help hackers in such a situation. Rootkits keep the infected user under an illusion that the system has not been compromised. This gives enough time for the malware to perform its activities (replication, file corruption, distribution).

Backdoor: It is a frequently used technique by the hackers, where an alternative pathway for accessing target computer is created to hack or infect the targeted PC. This method bypasses usual authentication for remote access to victim PC.

Cookies: A cookie is simply a small bit of text that gets stored on user’s computer harddisk, mainly for the purpose of identifying the end user to a particular site and whatever information that site wanted to retain about the user when they are visiting. It is NOT at all a malware, but frequently misused to unethically track user’s browsing habits.

There are some of the popular techniques used by unethical hacker groups, which have been described below.

Phishing: It is a deceptive fraudulent technique, that usually propagates through e-mails and involves pretention of some trusted web source, for the ultimate aim of retrieving  financial information and other confidential details of the victim. For instance, a user may compromise his access details to Paypal account, by following and trusting a link that was sent to him within an e-mail, claiming to be from Paypal itself.

Zero day attack: When a new malware is created and starts getting distributed over the web, it certainly takes some finite time for the Anti-virus and anti-spam groups to track it down and create a patch for providing downloadable update for the end users. That’s the early stage when there’s no patch available for the malware and the possibility of that harmful script to spread out and cause the damage are maximum. That short and early period of a attacking malware is referred as Zero day Attack.

DoS attack : Denial of Service is an attack, basically aimed to make the computer/server, hosting any web service, unavailable to its intended users. One common methodology of invoking a DOS attack is over-saturating the victim server with unplanned(absurdly high) service requests. It is often referred as DDoS(Distributed Denial of Service) attack as it involves a quantifiable number of end computers to cause such an attack.

USB flash drives have today become the De facto standard of portable data storage, replacing older data storage devices such as Floppy disks and even CD/DVDs. As a double layer DVD goes to a maximum of 9.6GB of data storage only, USB flash drives are way ahead of  data storage capacity, going upto 64GB or even ...]]> USB Flash drive is primarily a data storage device consisting of a NAND-type flash memory. It also posseses a Universal Serial Bus(USB) interface for ease of connectivity with computers or laptops using integrated USB port.

USB flash drives have today become the De facto standard of portable data storage, replacing older data storage devices such as Floppy disks and even CD/DVDs. As a double layer DVD goes to a maximum of 9.6GB of data storage only, USB flash drives are way ahead of  data storage capacity, going upto 64GB or even more. Although, the cost of USB is comparatively higher than CD/DVDs but there are several other benefits of USB Flash Drive, which make it a High utility product and a much preferrable(or killer) option compared to other conventional data storage media.

Rewritability: A USB Flash drive can be erased and re-written even hundreds of thousands of times in its whole lifespan. A CD/DVD may be re-writable or not. In case of Re-Writable(RW) CD/DVDs, the issue is with the limitation of rewriting cycles(only 1000 or so) and also the appropriacy for large scale re-writing only. For the need of small scale re-writing(such as writing a 140kb word file), CD/DVDs prove highly impractical and hence USB drives are most preferred.

Compact size: USB flash drives are so small in size that they are often kept as a part of keychain or carried in the wallet itself. They are often termed as Pen drive, just because of their similar size and shape as that of a pen(even smaller than a pen)

Faster data transfer: Compared to older storage media, USB flash drive transfers data much faster, reading data at about 30Mb/s and writing at around 12-15 Mb/s. Upcoming upgradations such as USB 3.0 are certainly going to enhance the data transfer rates by multi-folds.

High capacity: USB flash drives have a huge storage capacity, going to a maximum of 64GB, much higher compared to storage capacities of CD(700MB) or Dual layered DVD(9.6GB). For more storage along with portability, one has to switch to Portable harddisks.

Longer lifespan: As write and erase cycles go in hundreds of thousands in count, the lifespan of a USB drive goes beyond 10 years(for general purpose usage). Within this much time, the user is expected to actually switch to more advanced USB solutions.

Sturdy Design:  Unlike fragile Floppy disks or CD/DVDs, USB flash drives are much more resistant to wear and tear. USB Flash drives are generally scratch-proof and have lesser chances of any mechanical damage. They are also protected against dust penetration.

Portability & Comfort: It is very convenient to use a USB flash drive on modern PCs and laptops. Almost every PC/laptop has multiple USB ports and therefore, you will hardly find a moment when you cannot find a USB port for plugging your flash drive into it. As the size of USB drive is ultra small, its very convenient to carry along as well.

All the above advantages of USB flash drives have made it the ‘Most popular portable data storage device’ today.

Ubiquitous support

There are plenty of other Google services which are a great utility but are still to gain mass attention by end users. One such web service is Google Transit.

Google Transit is a web service that helps users reach their destination by providing an ...]]> Google has a spectrum of high-utility web services, few of which have gradually become a necessity for a large majority of population on web. Services like Google search, Gmail, Google Maps, Youtube are certainly the most utilized web services among the array of web services run by Google.

There are plenty of other Google services which are a great utility but are still to gain mass attention by end users. One such web service is Google Transit.

Google Transit is a web service that helps users reach their destination by providing an easy-to-follow routes and direction information using available public transport. As public transport is usually the ‘most utilized’ transportation service in any city/state by general public, Google Transit proves very useful as it gives detailed information about the transit stops, station information, schedules, journey duration(estimated) and even fare information.

As precise route and schedule information is usually controlled by the Public transport authorities, Google urges the local transport authorities of cities in various countries across the globe to provide Google with the relevant information so that the information may be integrated in Google Transit service and made publicly available for more convenience to the users of those public transport services.

So far, more than 405 cities across the globe have some or all of their public transport services integrated in Google Transit service. 50 of these covered cities are even supported with a latest feature addition called Transit layer in Google Maps. Transit layer lets you virtually superimpose the Public transportation map over the normal map of your city. This will prove helpful mainly for those who’ve the option of travelling through personal conveyance(say ‘car’) and want to check if there’s a cheaper , faster and convenient way to drive to their destination via available public transport.

With Google Transit, both ‘Public transport authorities’ and ‘end commuters’ get the benefit as it promotes Public transport usage and eases off the daily commutation hassles for end commuters.

How to access Google Transit

• Go to Google Maps,
• Click on ‘Get Directions‘ tab on the left side on the map page
• Enter the ‘source‘ and ‘destination‘ fields according to your requirements
• In the menu option below, select ‘By Public transit‘ and press ‘Enter’ key

In case, your city is not one of those 405 cities where Google Transit service is currently available, you will be notified about the service unavailability

Ways to access Google Transit

• Through your Web browser
• Through Mobile Phone

As Google Transit helps you plan your trip using public transport, its will prove much useful and suitable to be accessed via mobile phone. As its not feasible to carry your PC/laptop everywhere and start using it while on the go, its great to utilize Google Transit via Mobile Phone.

Although ‘Google Transit’ is so well integrated within Google Maps that it actually appears to be one of the many features that Google Maps provides but the utility that Google Transit serves is really appreciable.