tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-999436860095754202024-02-20T20:04:34.435+05:30Technological currytechnological news, reviews , tips, tricks served hotsandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.comBlogger44125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-53118597301159855792009-08-18T23:55:00.003+05:302009-08-19T00:16:30.113+05:30Automaticall reconnect the internet on disconnectionDue to certain problems with my ISP my net often gets disconnected. As you can guess there is nothing more frustrating then trying to do something and see that your internet is not working and then manually reconnecting the network. In order to fix this i wrote a simple script to monitor my network at an interval of one minute<br />Command:<br /><blockquote>vi ~/monitor.sh</blockquote>Script:<br /><blockquote>#!/bin/bash<br />export DISPLAY=:0<br />pingout=`ping www.google.com -q -c 5 -W 2`;<br />pingstatus=$?;<br />total=`echo $pingout| grep transmitted | sed "s/.*\([[:digit:]]\) received.*/\1/"`;<br />if [[ $total -lt 4 || $pingstatus -ne '0' || $total -eq '' ]]<br />then<br /> logger "Internet connection not working.$total/5 pings. Reconnecting..."<br /> notify-send -i modem "Reconnecting" "$total/5 pings failed. Reconnecting..."<br /> poff -a;<br /> pon dsl-provider;<br />else<br /> logger "Internet connection working properly"<br />fi</blockquote>The script pings google.com and if less then four pings are successful in five attempts(60%) then a reconnection is performed.<br />To execute it periodically every minute i just added it to cron by simply executing<br /><blockquote>crontab -e</blockquote><br />in a terminal and adding the following line at the end of the file<br /><blockquote>* * * * * ~/monitor.sh >/dev/null 2>&1<br /></blockquote><br /><blockquote></blockquote>sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-16331955822700374062008-04-12T18:27:00.002+05:302008-04-12T18:42:28.024+05:30New Post FinallyFirst of all i would really like to apologize to my friends who visit my blog and don't find anything post on it :(. It has been almost 7 months since i posted my last post on this blog.<br />The reason for me not posting anything on the blog is that i got disconnected from the internet in september due to a small argument with my ISP. I got internet installed a month or two back and i had been so busy since then that i didn't get any time post anything. Anyways, here is a summary of what has happened in the past months.<br /><ol><li>Sadly but truly i have grown fatter.</li><li>The result for our 3rd semester came out and i have passed :).</li><li>Me and my team won two event trophies. "<span style="font-weight: bold;">Technophilia - Jawahar Lal University</span>"and "<span style="font-weight: bold;">Envisage - IIC ,DU</span>". Me and one of my friend also won three events at <span style="font-weight: bold;">MSIT, IP</span>. There was no team trophy there had there been any i am sure we would have got it ;).</li></ol>This is in all what has happened. I have made a promise before to post regularly so i won't make it again to break it but i sincerely hope i will be able to update the blog as regularly as possible.sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-37049989127520834912007-09-21T20:52:00.000+05:302007-09-21T21:22:43.291+05:30Online Office suite market heating upThe online office suite market is heating up with Google launching it's power point creator to complete it's office suite. <a href="http://docs.google.com/">Google</a> competes directly with <a href="http://writer.zoho.com/">Zoho</a> which also has a very famous and successful offering for the online office suite.<br />Although Zoho is not as popular as Google docs it is much more powerful. For eg. The Google power point creation tool does not allow users to create basic figures in presentations which is allowed by Zoho Show.<br />In my view although less famous Zoho wins hands down in the competition against Google. It does help against competition when you are as famous as Google. But unless Google adds some of the basic functionality in it's tools I don't see it winning against Zoho in the near future.sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-76064522331361173782007-08-29T02:54:00.000+05:302007-08-29T03:02:56.621+05:30Content-Aware Image Resizing'Seam Carving for Content-Aware Image Resizing' is the name of the paper presented by two Israeli professors, Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir, at the SIGGRAPH 2007 conference in San Diego (<a href="http://www.faculty.idc.ac.il/arik/imret.pdf">paper here</a>)<br /><center><br /><object height="350" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vIFCV2spKtg"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vIFCV2spKtg" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="350" width="425"></embed></object><br /></center><br />The algorithm for resizing figures out which parts of an image are less significant which makes it possible to change the aspect ratio of an image without making the content look skewed or stretched out.Let's wait and watch some real applications being made available which use this algorithm. I would love that.sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-90028861026616618672007-08-29T02:42:00.000+05:302007-08-29T02:52:40.698+05:30Microsoft hackers blog"Hackers @ Microsoft" is name of a new Microsoft blog officially launched on blogs.msdn.com the website which hosts many of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Microsoft's</span> employee blogs. This blog promises to tell us what some of the white hat hackers at <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Microsoft</span> do. Quoting the blog <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/hackers/archive/2007/08/25/welcome-to-a-different-kind-of-blog-from-microsoft.aspx">post</a>...<br /><blockquote><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;">We employ "</span><a class="" title="wikipedia - whitehat" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_hat" target="_blank" mce_href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_hat"><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;">white hat hackers</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana,geneva;">" who spend their time <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">pen testing</span> and code reviewing applications and software looking for weaknesses and vulnerabilities<wbr> so that others don't once we've released that code into the wild. We employ many many smart testers who know more about some of our software then perhaps the architects who designed it. We also employ some of the top researchers in their industry, dedicated people working on the bleeding edge of whats going to be common place in the next 5 or 10 years of computing. So yes, Microsoft does have hackers, and its time to introduce you to some of them and show you what it is, exactly that they do.<br /><br /></span></blockquote>Interesting? Well, it has been three days and i haven't seen anything interesting on the blog come up yet. I do hope that hackers @ <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Microsoft</span> come with a nice article soon.sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-25392449655013335622007-08-13T01:00:00.000+05:302007-08-13T01:11:55.716+05:30Error mounting UDF DVD in linuxToday while working on <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">linux</span> i stumbled on an interesting problem. The problem was that whenever i put my DVD which was in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">UDF</span> format into the drive <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">linux</span> simply wouldn't mount it. It reported the following error:<br /><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Unable to mount the selected volume. The volume is probably in a format that cannot be mounted<br /><br /></span>mount: block device /<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">dev</span>/<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">hdc</span> is write-protected, mounting read-only<br />mount: wrong <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">fs</span> type, bad option, bad <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">superblock</span> on /<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">dev</span>/<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">hdc</span>,<br /> missing <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">codepage</span> or other error<br /> in some cases useful info is found in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">syslog</span> - try<br /> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">dmesg</span> | tail or so</blockquote><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">upone</span> doing "<span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">dmesg</span> | tail</span>" i got the error "<span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Unable to identify CD-ROM format</span>". This surely was impossible as the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">linux</span> kernel comes with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">udf</span> support built-in. This lead me to believe that the problem lay somewhere else. After a lot of hits and misses i found out that the problem lay in the "<span style="font-weight: bold;">/etc/<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">fstab</span></span>" file.<br />It previously contained the line:<br /><blockquote>/<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">dev</span>/<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">hdc</span> /media/<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">cdrom</span>0 <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">udf</span>,<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">iso</span>9660 users,<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">noauto</span> 0 0</blockquote><br />upon changing this line to<br /><blockquote>/<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">dev</span>/<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">hdc</span> /media/<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">cdrom</span>0 auto users,<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">noauto</span> 0 0</blockquote><br />everything started working great.<br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote>sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-21200540683214187182007-06-22T22:01:00.000+05:302007-06-25T01:27:49.901+05:30Download torrents using firefox<a href="http://www.opera.com/">Opera</a> comes with an inbuilt torrent downloader which allows you to download torrents from the internet. Although the same functionality doesn't come inbuilt in <a href="http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/">firefox</a>, there are couple of <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/">extensions</a> available for firefox which allow you to download torrents.<br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><div class="para"> <h3><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Firetorrent</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYlR7cNwv2BRUkkXrpKUmkrAqWjDF189_DkQBLLgJlTXRp2P5gjZjkk-VboV52bB_FsjZpVu010m3VWWcyvc98HseVGPGC-sT4pm2lw2imOUOmZwuF-yAoa1X9y8b-8L4ugGMM3wsM1eU/s1600-h/Wyzo+-+FireTorrent_1182710883390.png"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYlR7cNwv2BRUkkXrpKUmkrAqWjDF189_DkQBLLgJlTXRp2P5gjZjkk-VboV52bB_FsjZpVu010m3VWWcyvc98HseVGPGC-sT4pm2lw2imOUOmZwuF-yAoa1X9y8b-8L4ugGMM3wsM1eU/s400/Wyzo+-+FireTorrent_1182710883390.png" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 192px; height: 63px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYlR7cNwv2BRUkkXrpKUmkrAqWjDF189_DkQBLLgJlTXRp2P5gjZjkk-VboV52bB_FsjZpVu010m3VWWcyvc98HseVGPGC-sT4pm2lw2imOUOmZwuF-yAoa1X9y8b-8L4ugGMM3wsM1eU/s400/Wyzo+-+FireTorrent_1182710883390.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5079703978512780706" border="0" /></a></h3></div><a href="http://www.wyzo.com/firetorrent/">Firetorrent</a> was initially created for a browser named <a href="http://www.wyzo.com/">wyzo</a><a>, a firefox modification like </a><a href="http://www.wyzo.com/firetorrent/">flock</a>. It is designed with people having minimal bittorent experience in mind.<br />Firetorrent adds a seperate tab to the browser's download manager where you can see all the torrents which are downoading. It is the best and most easy-to-use torrent downloading extension available today for firefox.<br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;" class="excerpt"><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNC73hXf7nxO1PhAYBY4e9-Dj6EejmcnprJzG9pJp38UrtRXPqJKKFSMtum0odmMDajNNyM2v9fuabECNuwosHJbXMjlCcQnDxZDt-l486iMM4NtvqMaYz3ZmEncEl-ZIcdi1tdLlwE6s/s1600-h/firetorrent.working.gif"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNC73hXf7nxO1PhAYBY4e9-Dj6EejmcnprJzG9pJp38UrtRXPqJKKFSMtum0odmMDajNNyM2v9fuabECNuwosHJbXMjlCcQnDxZDt-l486iMM4NtvqMaYz3ZmEncEl-ZIcdi1tdLlwE6s/s400/firetorrent.working.gif" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNC73hXf7nxO1PhAYBY4e9-Dj6EejmcnprJzG9pJp38UrtRXPqJKKFSMtum0odmMDajNNyM2v9fuabECNuwosHJbXMjlCcQnDxZDt-l486iMM4NtvqMaYz3ZmEncEl-ZIcdi1tdLlwE6s/s400/firetorrent.working.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5079711249892412850" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Firetorrent</span></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" ><br />FoxTorrent<br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgExfVvz1StjE-1OzV2LaRbnR3lJ3yXoCafMNiCbrL2mvMvwQFprRq-d6ptWC7Sk9jk1VQd6-XbRmNxN8WciHnwoYSqLQ9iCUGy4bETlQr1-Kw6KYRqCmSJAtHKfQRocBM3FV6vnDutC5Q/s1600-h/foxtorrentlogo.png"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgExfVvz1StjE-1OzV2LaRbnR3lJ3yXoCafMNiCbrL2mvMvwQFprRq-d6ptWC7Sk9jk1VQd6-XbRmNxN8WciHnwoYSqLQ9iCUGy4bETlQr1-Kw6KYRqCmSJAtHKfQRocBM3FV6vnDutC5Q/s400/foxtorrentlogo.png" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 227px; height: 44px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgExfVvz1StjE-1OzV2LaRbnR3lJ3yXoCafMNiCbrL2mvMvwQFprRq-d6ptWC7Sk9jk1VQd6-XbRmNxN8WciHnwoYSqLQ9iCUGy4bETlQr1-Kw6KYRqCmSJAtHKfQRocBM3FV6vnDutC5Q/s400/foxtorrentlogo.png" alt="foxtorrent" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5079638338527595906" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.foxtorrent.com/">FoxTorrent</a> is developed by the Silicon Valley based company <a href="http://redswoosh.net/">RedSwoosh</a> . </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Foxtorrent integrates nicely into firefox and starts downloading the torrent as soon as you click on any torrent link. However, we believe that it lacks usability. As it is still in beta this might be an extension to look out for in future.<br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTHI7Nzdt6COu2txiJIR5Ny7gripfeNF1ClzoUNjDtqrHuuqo3RMPZ2-SV5s3_6fMb0NvNtQ6CHp8y3Fv_4RCaTMFUVbLPrEZ7bpVsTQiIvNIw6wHZbhiKTk_4CwaKQNqWHUoSuiuFlOM/s1600-h/foxtorrentworking.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTHI7Nzdt6COu2txiJIR5Ny7gripfeNF1ClzoUNjDtqrHuuqo3RMPZ2-SV5s3_6fMb0NvNtQ6CHp8y3Fv_4RCaTMFUVbLPrEZ7bpVsTQiIvNIw6wHZbhiKTk_4CwaKQNqWHUoSuiuFlOM/s400/foxtorrentworking.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 442px; height: 119px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTHI7Nzdt6COu2txiJIR5Ny7gripfeNF1ClzoUNjDtqrHuuqo3RMPZ2-SV5s3_6fMb0NvNtQ6CHp8y3Fv_4RCaTMFUVbLPrEZ7bpVsTQiIvNIw6wHZbhiKTk_4CwaKQNqWHUoSuiuFlOM/s400/foxtorrentworking.jpg" alt="foxtorrent working" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5079649604226813330" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Foxtorrent</span><br /><br /></div>sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-5449411235453341102007-06-22T04:04:00.000+05:302007-06-22T04:45:03.540+05:30Allow users to print your page as pdf<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXga-QUwYa9pzuxvMfNpCRCoIXLwEPnqN08mYVYmOKXgz7GpB7Ghr5XcVQFva5Hsgq3wzsV6gqw46a1hwP2nITCTukF8079Th-RfeUDvR-NG9F1jsTRMU8pcWUGSu_jAycT6EtUSqXldc/s1600-h/pdf_icon.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5078656856896081266" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 134px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 144px" height="132" alt="PDF" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXga-QUwYa9pzuxvMfNpCRCoIXLwEPnqN08mYVYmOKXgz7GpB7Ghr5XcVQFva5Hsgq3wzsV6gqw46a1hwP2nITCTukF8079Th-RfeUDvR-NG9F1jsTRMU8pcWUGSu_jAycT6EtUSqXldc/s320/pdf_icon.gif" width="120" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br /><a href="http://pdfonline.com/">Pdfonline</a>, the service which provides users the ability to convert their documents to pdfs easily has launched a new service which will give you the ability to allow your site visitors to convert any page on your site into pdf and download it. </div><div><br />To add this functionality add the following code to your site:<br /><code><br /><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br /><br />function savePageAsPDF() {<br /><br />var pURL = "http://savepageaspdf.pdfonline.com/pdfonline/pdfonline.asp?cURL=" + escape(document.location.href);<br /><br />window.open(pURL, "PDFOnline", "scrollbars=yes, resizable=yes,width=640, height=480,menubar,toolbar,location");<br /><br /></script><br /><br /><a href="javascript:savePageAsPDF()">Save Page As PDF</a><br /></code><br /><script type="text/javascript">function savePageAsPDF() { var pURL = "http://savepageaspdf.pdfonline.com/pdfonline/pdfonline.asp?cURL=" + escape(document.location.href);window.open(pURL, "PDFOnline", "scrollbars=yes, resizable=yes,width=640, height=480,menubar,toolbar,location");}</script><br /><br />Click <a href="javascript:savePageAsPDF()">here</a> to convert this page to pdf.<br /><br />Please note that this service is currently in beta and the result might not be as expected.<br />More <a href="http://pdfonline.blogspot.com/">here</a><br /></div>sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-1993390420643094372007-06-20T12:18:00.000+05:302007-06-20T12:44:47.880+05:30Accessing web mail securely and ads freeWhen it comes to privacy i am a total freak. Some might reason that perhaps this is because i don't trust my <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Internet</span> service provider( <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">ISP</span>) and they would be right. I really don't trust my <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">ISP</span>.<br />Many people are in the illusion that when they are using <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">web mail</span> they are secure and the traffic between their browser and the server is encrypted and the data is safe from prying eyes (I have actually talked to quite a few people who believe this). The data between your browser and the server is not encrypted in any sort of way. The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">login</span> information might be encrypted in some form of another but never the data. The service in which complete encryption is provide is usually paid. Worried? Don't worry there is a way in which you can use your mail securely and whats more it is completely ads free.<br />Most popular email service providers yahoo and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">google</span> (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">gmail</span>) for example provide you ability to access to your email account using <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_Office_Protocol">POP</a>. This allows you to access your mail from an email client (outlook, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">thunderbird</span> etc.) directly and unlike <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">web mail</span> the traffic between the client and the browser is completely encrypted and is very secure. To start using pop all you need is an email client. You can use outlook which comes bundled with every version of windows. Click <a href="http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA011133141033.aspx">here</a> to know how to configure outlook to access yahoo and <a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=13276">here</a> to configure outlook for gmail. The more adventurous of you people might want to try <a href="http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/">thunderbird</a> for accessing your email.<br /><br />Related: <a href="http://sandeeppro.blogspot.com/2007/06/how-to-tell-when-someone-is-reading.html">How to tell when someone is reading your email</a> | <a href="http://sandeeppro.blogspot.com/2007/06/add-encryption-to-your-webmail.html">Add encryption to your webmail</a> | <a href="http://sandeeppro.blogspot.com/2007/04/still-using-ym-aol-or-gtalk-think-again.html">Add encryption to messenger</a>sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-78851612717374127572007-06-15T23:45:00.000+05:302007-06-16T01:33:03.233+05:30How to tell when someone is reading your emailSometimes it happens that you suspect that someone is reading your email and but you don't have any proof that someone is actually reading your email. You can verify this by following this simple three step procedure:-<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step 1</span>:- Create free accounts at any email service of your choice and at <a href="http://www.sitemeter.com/">sitemeter</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step 2</span>:- From the new email account compose an email to your email address.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step 3</span>:- In the email put the html tracking code you get from <a href="http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=manager&area=htmlcode">here</a>.<br /><br /><br />Now whenever someone sees your email this will be tracked by sitemeter and you can easily verify that someone has read your mail or not.<br /><br />Note:- If the person has turned of images then this trick will not work.sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-28978604799421147532007-06-14T20:53:00.000+05:302007-06-14T21:18:38.822+05:30How browsers make money while remaining free<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieE17B4tpgWIQcTV5HC5eNRvSni6QnaP8koHlWy-bHsXZAzx1It6AOAcZCQxuMENfT_rJ_Hznh65b9e0wFOMpCXQwosDunfk4t-NWvbIKEcybjJUyLUmpWUGfPi8q349VMGVuQW3bX-08/s1600-h/firefox.png"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieE17B4tpgWIQcTV5HC5eNRvSni6QnaP8koHlWy-bHsXZAzx1It6AOAcZCQxuMENfT_rJ_Hznh65b9e0wFOMpCXQwosDunfk4t-NWvbIKEcybjJUyLUmpWUGfPi8q349VMGVuQW3bX-08/s320/firefox.png" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 72px; height: 70px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieE17B4tpgWIQcTV5HC5eNRvSni6QnaP8koHlWy-bHsXZAzx1It6AOAcZCQxuMENfT_rJ_Hznh65b9e0wFOMpCXQwosDunfk4t-NWvbIKEcybjJUyLUmpWUGfPi8q349VMGVuQW3bX-08/s320/firefox.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5075944679537937762" border="0" /></a><div style="text-align: justify;">Sometimes back speculations were rife that mozilla had <a href="http://www.calacanis.com/2006/03/06/firefox-mozilla-corporation-mozilla-foundation-made-72m-last/">earned about $72M</a> in the year 2005 in revenues. Altough not exactly true this estimate was pretty close to the actual <a href="http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/">revenue of $52.9M</a>. Most of this revenue was generated through what mitchell termed as search engine relationships.<br />Whenever you type any search query in firefox a <span style="font-weight: bold;">client=firefox-a</span> string is appended to the search query which tells the google servers that the search generated from firefox. This is logged by the google servers and whenever a user clicks on a adsense ad which generated from the firefox browser a cut from it goes to mozilla. Seeing that there are millions of firefox users a $1 contribution from each user will be enough to generate a revenue of millions for mozilla.<br />This market is so lucrative that it converted opera a shareware browser earning about $4M each year to a freeware. Even a popular download manager( flashget) ended up being a freeware due to this reason.<br />I wonder what mozilla's revenue will be this year. Seeing that firefox user base has grown by an enormous amount i bet it will be close to $150M.<br /></div>sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-46197705416355621912007-06-14T00:16:00.000+05:302007-06-14T00:31:39.727+05:30Google fixes it's urlMost of the people now know that we have a search <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">url</span> for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">google</span> on which when you search for anything <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">google</span> doesn't display any ads. For those who don't know it is simply the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">google</span> search <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">url</span> with <span style="font-weight: bold;">output=<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">googleabout</span></span> appended to it.<br />It seems that now <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">google</span> has fixed this and this hack is no longer useful. Try searching for <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=monster&output=googleabout">monster</a> and immediately you see <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">adsense</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">infront</span> of you whether you use <span style="font-weight: bold;">output=<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">googleabout</span></span> or not.sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-77213935239716585652007-06-13T04:04:00.000+05:302007-06-13T04:13:25.543+05:30Use google PPT viewer to convert powerpoint presentations to slideshowsGoogle has launched it's ppt viewer which integrates with integrates with gmail and allows users to view power point attachments as slideshow on computers which don't have powerpoint installed. We can use this functionality to convert any presentation to a slideshow. Simply browsing through all the slides makes the slides available in the flash format in the temporary directory of the browser. This works great for internet explorer and is not very usefull for firefox. For more advanced purposes you can use <a href="http://slideshare.net">slideshare.net</a> a service for creating and sharing presentations.sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-60005247902558291522007-06-13T03:33:00.000+05:302007-06-13T03:50:37.248+05:30Was blogger ready to come out of beta?Google happily removed the beta tag from blogger some times back. But was blogger really ready to come out of beta? There are still some horrid issues with blogger which need to be fixed. For example:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Issue 1</span>: In the post editor the <span style="font-weight: bold;"><</span> or <span style="font-weight: bold;">></span> in the post don't get automatically changed to <span style="font-weight: bold;">&lt;</span> or <span style="font-weight: bold;">&gt;</span> and changing them manually is very inconvenient.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Issue 2</span>: The blogger post editor is not very compatible with opera, a browser whose market share is constantly increase and is the third most used browser today.<br /><br />There are several other issues including issues with the feed, the layout editor. The above two are the issues which i find the most inconvenient. In my opinion taking blogger out of beta before fixing these issues was not at all good. I certainly didn't expect something like this from google.sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-7069713113060987082007-06-13T03:24:00.000+05:302007-06-13T03:33:34.995+05:30Recover your lost disk<div style="text-align: justify;">Sometimes when trying to boot your machine it just happens that the machine just doesn't boot. Everything else seems to be working fine and whats more is that you can use another drive or a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">bootable</span> CD/DVD to boot your machine but not your default disk drive. Also, sometimes it happens that your disk stores backup of some very important files. For this all is not lost and there is still some hope left. You can try using <a href="http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">TestDisk</span></a>.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">TestDisk</span> is a cross platform, open-source and free software which you can use to recover your disk. It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">bootable</span> again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting your Partition Table).<br /></div><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">TestDisk</span> can:<br /><ul><li>Fix partition table, recover deleted partition </li><li>Recover FAT32 boot sector from its backup </li><li>Rebuild FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 boot sector </li><li>Fix FAT tables </li><li>Rebuild <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">NTFS</span> boot sector </li><li>Recover <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">NTFS</span> boot sector from its backup </li><li>Fix <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">MFT</span> using <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">MFT</span> mirror </li><li>Locate ext2/ext3 Backup <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">SuperBlock</span></li></ul>and it supports:<br /><ul><li>DOS (either real or in a Windows 9x DOS-box), </li><li>Windows (NT4, 2000, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">XP</span>, 2003), </li><li>Linux, </li><li>FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, </li><li><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">SunOS</span> </li><li><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">MacOS</span></li></ul>Overall <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">TestDisk</span> is a great utility to handle rough situations like disk failures.sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-83254949030663671472007-06-13T02:43:00.000+05:302007-06-13T03:19:31.112+05:30Add encryption to your webmailFree email services are great. The only thing they lack is an encryption facility which is provided by default by any business level email service. Due to this the emails can be read by any middleman using a packet sniffer.<br /><div align="justify">Now you can use <a href="http://firegpg.tuxfamily.org/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">FireGPG</span></a> to encrypt your email messages. It is a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">firefox</span> extension which adds support for encryption to email messages. For this it adds an entry to the context menu for easy accessibility and the encryption is done using <a href="http://www.gnupg.org/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">GnuPG</span></a>.<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://firegpg.tuxfamily.org/images/little_screenshot.jpg"><img src="http://firegpg.tuxfamily.org/images/little_screenshot.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px;" src="http://firegpg.tuxfamily.org/images/little_screenshot.jpg" alt="FireGPG" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">FireGPG<br /></span><br /></div>Currently only <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">gmail</span> is supported and support for other email service is being added.<br />Related: <a href="http://sandeeppro.blogspot.com/2007/04/still-using-ym-aol-or-gtalk-think-again.html">Encrypt your chat messages</a><br /></div>sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-74692440895201340392007-06-13T00:42:00.000+05:302007-06-13T00:51:18.533+05:30Increase your privacy in firefox<a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1306">Stealther</a> is a firefox extension for those people who like me are very concerned about there privacy. It gives you the ability to disable any sort of browsing history or information maintained by the browser for a particular session and converts firefox into an ultimate stealth browser. It is different from other extension due to the fact that the information which was there before enabling stealther will remain there and is not deleted. Only the information for the particular session is deleted. Get it from <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1306">here</a>.sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-81447928746982940402007-06-12T21:01:00.000+05:302007-06-12T21:09:56.487+05:30Wikipedia gets about 1.7 billion hits each month from googleThere is an interesting statistics which was released by wikimedia's <a href="http://leuksman.com/log/2007/06/07/wikimedia-page-views/">leuksman.com</a>. According to it wikipedia gets around 7 billion pageviews each month. Majority of these are generated by the internal wiki links (around 3 billion, or roughly 43%). Google accounts for about 23% of the traffic with approximately 1.7 billion referals. Huge numbers in my opinion :).sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-79562211713882402202007-06-12T20:16:00.000+05:302007-06-12T20:56:27.943+05:30Alexa traffic rankings<div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.alexa.com/">Alexa</a> is a traffic ranking site. It displays traffic rating of a website based on certain statistics it collects by installing a toolbar. This statistics is basically the average number of hits and users a website receives. A lot of people take alexa traffic ranking as the measuring stick for site statistics. Use of alexa traffic ranking to measure a website's poplarity for business purposes is extremely hazardous due to various reasons.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Reason 1</span>:- The traffic ranking are based on statistics collected by a toolbar which is extremely rare. I have hardly seen the toolbar installed on any computer i have come across( i myself didn't know about the toolbar sometimes back). Due to this reason a small number of hits from a browser which has the toolbar installed will reasult in a large fluctuation of the traffic ratings.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Reason 2</span>:- There are various websites such as <a href="http://alexabooster.com/">alexabooster</a> which provide specialized services to you to boost your traffic ratings for a few dollars. There even exists specialized user groups like <a href="http://www.alexasurf.com/">alexasurf</a> where people help each other to increase their traffic ratings.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Reason 3</span>:- It was found sometime ago that using <a href="http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?sandeeppro.blogspot.com">alexa redirects</a> helps in boosting your traffic ratings. This flaw has been exploited ever since.<br /><br />All this makes alexa highly unreliable. Alexa traffic ranking is nonetheless being used as it is the only solution of it's kind available in the market and there is nowhere else to go.<br /><br /><br />An alternative solution such as google teaming with other site statistics websites like sitemeter,statcounter and using the combined data to estimate a websites popularity would have been much nicer and more accurate.<br /><br /><br /></div>sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-47115987877078173342007-06-03T01:59:00.000+05:302007-06-03T02:08:45.291+05:30Now universal automatic face recognition courtsey polar rose<a href="http://www.polarrose.com/">Polarrose</a> is a swedish startup which promises to allow the user to identify a face from all the photographs distributed over the internet. This means that you would have to just give the photograph of the person you want to find and polarrose will give you all the photographs of the person, distributed all over the internet. Imagine what would happen when you give the photograph of your girlfriend and find her making out with your old class mate :D. This has already stirred a huge privacy debate when the The Harvard Law Review, a journal for legal scholarship, recently published <a href="http://www.harvardlawreview.org/issues/120/may07/notes/facial_recognition_privacy_law.pdf">a short piece</a> on the privacy implications of such online photo-tagging. See the <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/06/02/026202.shtml">slashdot</a> thread for more.sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-15681163083917193972007-06-02T21:21:00.000+05:302007-06-02T21:31:16.927+05:30Webmaster's tip for search engine optimizationI have noticed recently that many websites which rank highly in search engine rankings have a <span style="font-weight: bold;"><link rel="<span style="font-style: italic;">archive</span>" href="<span style="font-style: italic;">archive pages</span>"></span> in there head. Anything in the link is not displayed by the browser but is seen by the search bots.<br />In a way these links are helpful in allowing search bots index the pages in the links although the links are not displayed to the user. You can use this feature to make search bots index the pages which are not linked through your main page. This makes your website more cohesive and easily searchable by the search bots.sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-57847958895590173212007-06-02T21:06:00.000+05:302007-06-02T21:32:37.648+05:30How to get access to email address of the deceased?An interesting topic emerged at <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Problem-solving/browse_thread/thread/5771519bb949a0a6/">google groups</a> some time ago. Someone from a family had passed away and the family wanted to access the gmail account of the person. According to gmail guide in order to do that you must provide the following information<blockquote><br /><ol><li>Your full name and contact information, including a verifiable email address.</li><li>The Gmail address of the individual who passed away.</li><li>a) The full header from an email message that you have received at your verifiable email address, from the Gmail account in question. (To obtain the header from a message in Gmail, open the message, click 'More options,' then click 'Show original.' Copy everything from 'Delivered- To:' through the 'References:' line. To obtain headers from other webmail or email providers, please refer to <a href="http://www.spamcop.com/help_with_headers/">http://www.spamcop.com/help_with_headers/</a>)<br />b) The entire contents of the message.</li><li> A copy of the death certificate of the deceased.</li><li> A copy of the document that gives you Power of Attorney over the Gmail account.</li><li> If you are the parent of the individual, please send us a copy of the Birth Certificate if the Gmail account owner was under the age of 18. In this case, Power of Attorney is not required.</li></ol></blockquote>All this information must be sent through post or fax to :<br /><blockquote><p> Google Inc.<br />Attention: Gmail User Support<br />1600 Amphitheatre Parkway<br />Mountain View, CA 94043 </p> <p> 650-644-0358<br /></p><p></p><blockquote></blockquote><br /><p></p></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote>Google will take approximately 30 days to process and verify the information and then give the person access to the email account if the information provided was correct.<br /><br />In case of yahoo the only way to get access to the email account of a deceased is by going to court and then legally asking yahoo to give access to the account. The email account of the deceased, will otherwise, be closed after 90 days of inactivity.sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-49930144857003362572007-06-01T19:25:00.000+05:302007-06-01T19:53:27.725+05:30Google pages you might not have seen.Here are some interesting pages on google you might have not seen.<br /><br /><a href="http://labs.google.com/sets">Google sets</a>: This page allows you to create sets of similar items with few examples.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/domainpark/">Google adsense for domains</a>: This page allows domain registrars to fill up there otherwise empty domain pages with google ads.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/heart/feature_cons.html">Google Valentine</a>: This one is google's tribute to the valentine day and includes the first ever valentine day google doodle. There is also a second page <a href="http://www.google.com/heart/heart01.html">here</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/Easter/feature_easter.html">Google Easter</a>: Google's easter holiday celebration.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/plex/index.html">Google plex</a>: Take a look at how it is inside google plex.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/stickers.html">Google stickers</a>: A collection of all the official google banners.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/stickers.html">Goolge Holidays</a>: A collection of all the google doodles till date.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/customlogos.html">Google fanlogos</a>: A collection of logos created by contributors.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html">Google Search patterns</a>: This is one of the most interesting page at google. This page gives the patterns and trends of all the search queries recieved by google till date. You can even see the summary on monthly and daily basis.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/mentalplex/">Google Mentalplex</a>: Google played an april fool's joke on it's users back in the year 2000. This page is still there for you to see. You can find a few more of google's jokes <a href="http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html">here</a> and <a href="http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html">here</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/moms/">Google moms</a>:- Google's tribute to moms.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/">Google hacker</a>: A tribute of google to the hacker culture. Are you l33t? Some of the more miscleneous ones are <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/xx-elmer/">elmer</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/xx-bork/">bork</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/xx-klingon/">kligon</a>and <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/xx-piglatin/">piglatin</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/microsoft.html">Google Microsoft</a>: Search anything related to microsoft. A few more include <a href="http://www.google.com/bsd.html">BSD</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/linux.html">Linux</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/mac.html">Mac</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/unclesam">US government</a>and <a href="http://www.google.com/lochp">local search</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://moon.google.com/">Google moon</a>: See the pictures of moon. There is also <a href="http://www.google.com/mars/">Google mars</a>.<br /><br />There are many more unseen pages on google which i will add in part 2.sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-69432115061070115132007-05-31T22:12:00.000+05:302007-05-31T22:24:09.943+05:30Eff finds hidden account info in new DRM-free iTunes track<a href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070530-apple-hides-account-info-in-drm-free-music-too.html">Ars Technia</a> and <a href="http://www.tuaw.com/2007/05/30/tuaw-tip-dont-torrent-that-song/">TUAW</a> had reported that apple is hidding account info in the new iTunes track and when <a href="http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005282.php">EFF</a> tried to find out and compared two files of the same track downloaded with different accounts they found a difference of about 360k of data. This data could be possibly containing hidden personal information about the user. I wonder what will apple do with such information since this information is easily locatable and spoofable in the files and might not be effective against music pirates.sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99943686009575420.post-62457660828110495742007-05-31T00:18:00.000+05:302007-05-31T00:33:58.419+05:30Firefox Tip: How to disable auto suggest in the search barI always wonder what would be the reason that would make a user to disable the auto suggest feature that exists in the firefox search bar. I have seen these questions asked on many discussion boards and decided to lookup the matter. Disabling auto suggest is a three step procedure in firefox.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step 1</span>:- Type <span style="font-weight: bold;">about:config</span> in your browser's address bar.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step 2</span>:- Type <span style="font-weight: bold;">browser.search.suggest.enabled</span> in the filter bar on the page that loads.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step 3</span>:- If the value of <span style="font-weight: bold;">browser.search.suggest.enabled</span> is true Double click on it to make it value to <span style="font-weight: bold;">false</span>.<br /><br />After following the above procedure the auto suggestion would have been disabled. You can set the value to <span style="font-weight: bold;">true</span> anytime to enable the auto suggestion.sandeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887828462006986255noreply@blogger.com8