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July 06, 2008
17:30
Redesigned GCal to join Gmail
» ‎ gHacks technology news
The popular ‘Better Gmail 2’ Firefox extension adds a whole lot of great extra functionality to Gmail through various Greasemonkey scripts. What I loved the most was the inclusion of the fantastic ‘Gmail redesigned’ theme which changes the default Gmail look to a darker and more modern look.

Their was one disadvantage however… using any other Google service meant having to go back to the minimal and white Googley look which really doesn’t do a great deal for me.

Today however I saw on Lifehacker that the talented team behind the Gmail style have now released it for GCal as well, which is fantastic news.

You can see how much better it looks then the default style, and we can only hope that Google Reader is next on the list for getting this theme.

It doesn’t make any kind of difference to productivity, but it sure makes it a better experience to use.

It’s still in beta but you can download it here, you’ll need the Stylish extension as well. Lifehacker is saying it will be incorporated into the next update of the Better GCal extension.

The theme is designed to be redeveloped and modified by others to create more Gmail styles which is great news as there sure aren’t many around. You can check out the style sheet here.

The official thread from the developer’s is here and you can provide feedback and suggestions on the forums.

Now if someone could make it work for Opera that would be great!
Tags: gcal, gmail, theme
Related posts
16:30
Digsby too Plain for You?
» ‎ gHacks technology news
So some of disagreed with me when I introduced Digsby a couple days ago?

Dark Kosmos thinks “trillian is MUCH better (and looks better)” and I must admit the from the Trillian screenshot he showed it does look pretty good. I used Trillian for a while and wasn’t too taken with it, although that was a while ago now so maybe I should give it another try.

I’ve been using Digsby since it was in beta. I managed to procure a key somehow and I was really impressed by it. I’ve always been a fan of clean chats, like google talk and irc, and Digsby really does well. It used to have a problem a while ago where if you closed peoples chat windows too many times, Digsby just stopped letting you open new ones, but a quick bug report later, and within a few days the problem was fixed. Angelo said “It used to have a problem a while ago where if you closed peoples chat windows too many times, Digsby just stopped letting you open new ones, but a quick bug report later, and within a few days the problem was fixed.”

I would have to say this is something the Digsby developers have been impressing beta testers with, rapid responses and fixes to any reported problems and bugs, and consideration of all suggested features. It’s a great way to build a community up as you can see by Disbies.org which just recently started up.

Digsbies is a place for the Disby community to discuss the application and download new themes and find tools and tips. It’s only small but I’m sure with time and a official public release of Digsby version 1 it will grow.

A couple of my favourite themes are the Digsby Alive theme, designed to match Digsby in with the Windows Live products and the AeRoyale theme to better integrate Digsby with the official Windows Royale theme.

Also find more emoticons, a Wiki and a log converter for transferring all chat logs from all the major chat clients including Trillian to Digsby.
Tags: chat, digsby, themes, trillian
Related posts
13:30
Another round-up for English (not only) learning freaks
» ‎ gHacks technology news
Hardly anybody does without English nowadays, especially when dealing with tech stuff, and it’s therefore quite a good idea to at least keep it up or possibly even elevate your current language skills if you’re not lucky enough to be a native English speaker. While some ways of learning the language may be obsolete and boring, the ones I try to present you with tend to be extraordinary in some way so that learning then actually becomes a catchy activity you want to come back to. Allow me to introduce a few such ways now.

Shared Talk - Interlingual

This website is simply AWESOME. I’ve only registered recently and had the opportunity to only talk to several people for a short time but so far I’ve loved the way this service works. It aims at throwing people with the same desire of improving their language abilities together and allowing them to quickly and easily establish a communication channel for practicing it. The sweet thing about this service is that the website runs on highly developed Flash mainframe with tabbed interface and the communication with others takes place immediately without the need to install any kind of VoIP software. The only thing required for participation in voice chat is allowing the Flash applet to access the audio HW of your computer (either for current session only or permanently for this website) through a classic Shockwave dialog that appears while the voice channel is being set up. That is, after a quick registration where you fill in your profile and state the languages you know or want to learn plus the approximate level of your knowledge to enable the others to decide whether they feel like talking to you or preferably someone else. There are some additional functions too, like adding people you like to your “Network”, sending and receiving private messages and searching for an ideal language partner to share the experience with.
Featuring 113 languages in all, not only English (though, it is the most common indeed).

Listen and write - English

Frankly, this particular site does not appear too sophisticated at the first sight but the content’s what matters most and that’s what cought my attention in this case. Transcribing dictations in real time is what’s being dealth with here and I should say their system works better than I had expected at the beginning. You can use the embedded player to listen to the whole dictation or rather the other one below it which only plays a short part of it while you’re typing in the words you hear. That’s where it actually starts to be interesting. The system is pretty smart and it checks the typed-in words immediately to either auto-complete them or correct your mistakes in real time. Moreover, it repeats this small chunk of audio over and over until the text written by you matches what’s being said, consequently switching to the following chunk in an automated manner. The level of English in these listening exercises differs which is indicated by a number below each of them, thus making it easier to pick the one matching your abilities. RSS feeds for those exercises are available to keep you up to date as well. Some advanced statistics and features like performance diagrams are available after the registration. With the hope for slightly improving this site’s appearance to make it more catchy, I myself consider it a keeper.

BBC Learning - sole English

I’m consent about the general public being aware of various language courses broadcast by BBC, largely through the TV network. But did you know it offered a well-organized and comprehensive online course as well? With daily updated sources of grammar explanations, emphasized vocabulary in articles, audio/video stories, quizzes and thorough summary of idioms and phrases, it becomes a valuable vault of resources related to English in every way. Grab the RSS feed to have the upcoming lessons delivered as soon as they come out.
Tags: bbc learning, interlingual, languages, learning, learning english, listen and write, shared talk
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12:30
How To Reset, Remove, Clear or Reveal CMOS BIOS Security Password
» ‎ Raymond.CC Blog

There are times that we need to reset the computer’s BIOS security password. Yesterday I was at the local government technical school facility and the person who is in charge of the computer told me that they are not able to reinstall Windows because they are not able to get in the BIOS to set the boot order as it is password protected. The lecturers do not know the password as it is not set by them, but by some unknown student.

The most common way that most of us know on how to reset or clear the BIOS password is to physically remove the power from the computer by disconnecting the power plug and then removing a battery for 30 minutes from the motherboard. Another way is to reset the clear CMOS jumper on the motherboard itself. Both of the 2 methods mentioned works because most motherboards use a battery to sustain the BIOS/CMOS settings for the motherboards PROM chip. So by cutting off the battery power, the BIOS/CMOS settings will be erased.

If for some reason you’re unable to reset the computer’s BIOS or CMOS security password by removing the battery or clearing the CMOS jumper (using a laptop), here are few tools which you can try to use it to clear the BIOS password.

Before trying any tools to reset your CMOS password, try using the backdoor or default password listed below. The password are case sensitive. Take note of the small and capital letters.

AMI Backdoor or Default BIOS Passwords
A.M.I.
AAMMMIII
AMI
AMI SW
AMI?SW
AMI_SW
BIOS
CONDO
HEWITT RAND
LKWPETER
MI
Oder
PASSWORD

Award Backdoor or Default BIOS Passwords
589589
589721
595595
598598
1322222
_award
ALFAROME
ALLY
ALLy
aLLy
aLLY
aPAf
award
AWARD PW
AWARD SW
Award SW
AWARD?SW
AWARD?SW
AWARD_PW
AWARD_SW
awkward
AWKWARD
BIOSTAR
CONCAT
condo
Condo
CONDO
d8on
djonet
HLT
HLT
J256
j256
J262
j262
j322
j332
J332
J64
j64
KDD
KDD
lkwpeter
Lkwpeter
LKWPETER
PINT
pint
SER
SKY_FOX
SYXZ
syxz
szyx
TTPTHA
ZAAAADA
ZAAADA
ZAAADA
ZBAAACA
ZBAAACA
ZJAAADC
ZJAAADC

Phoenix Backdoor or Default BIOS Passwords
phoenix

There are actually quite a lot of BIOS password removal tool but be careful on what you’re using as some of it are really old (dated back to 1994). I will recommend you to try some of the newer CMOS password remover or decrypter tool. Good luck!

1. CmosPwd by CGSecurity

- This is probably the most up to date and popular CMOS decryption tool. CmosPwd decrypts password stored in cmos used to access BIOS SETUP. It works with the following BIOSes: ACER/IBM BIOS, AMI BIOS, AMI WinBIOS 2.5, Award 4.5x/4.6x/6.0, Compaq (1992), Compaq (New version), IBM (PS/2, Activa, Thinkpad), Packard Bell, Phoenix 1.00.09.AC0 (1994), a486 1.03, 1.04, 1.10 A03, 4.05 rev 1.02.943, 4.06 rev 1.13.1107, Phoenix 4 release 6 (User), Gateway Solo - Phoenix 4.0 release 6, Toshiba and Zenith AMI. With CmosPwd, you can also backup, restore and erase/kill cmos. You will have to logged in as administrator, run ioperm -i command and then run cmospwd_win.exe

[ Download CmosPwd 5.0 ]

2. !Bios by eleventh alliance

- !Bios is a tool originally developed for a brute, blunt removal of passwords from BIOSes. Through it�s development it has been severely extended. !Bios can decrypt the passwords used in some most common BIOS (including various bioses/versions by IBM, American Megatrends Inc, Award and Phoenix). !Bios can do crude, brutal attacks (�blasters�) which removes password from a lot of Bioses. A bit dangerous though, can give unexpected and unwanted results.

[ Download !Bios ]

3. PC CMOS Cleaner

- PC CMOS Cleaner is an easy-to-use tool to recover, delete, decode and display the superior passwords stored in BIOS whatever the brand is. Most types of BIOS such as AWARD, AMI, Compaq, Phoenix, Samsung, IBM, Compaq, DTK, Thinkpad, Sony, Toshiba are supported. It’s an bootable CD that runs on x86 and x86_64 computers. It can display the superior passwords of the BIOS, remove BIOS password(will set the BIOS to default status, need reset date).

[ Download PC CMOS Cleaner ]

Technorati Tags: reset, bios, cmos, security, password

12:21
Xirrus Wi-Fi Monitor
» ‎ gHacks technology news
Xirrus Wi-Fi Monitor is a gadget for Windows Vista and a widget that is requiring the Yahoo Widget Framework for Windows XP and Apple Macintosh OS X. It’s an application for wireless users that displays all kind of information about discovered wireless networks that are currently in reach.

The radar view seems to be the favorite way of displaying wireless networks for several applications of that kind. The main widget displays the radar view, the network adapter and information about a wireless hotspot if one has been selected from the radar. Those information include data rate, channel, SSID and signal strength.

The software monitors the surrounding area in real time and displays new wireless hotspots once they come into reach.

A detailed view is available as well which displays additional information such as default authentication mode, encryption, frequency, network mode and type. The software makes use of all wireless network adapters installed or connected to the computer system. Statistics and a glossary are available for additional information.
Tags: hotspots, osx widget, vista gadget, wi-fi, wi-fi monitor, wireless, xp widget
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8:35
Typhoon Frank - Lost everything
» ‎ TechiePortal

There has been no update on this blog for the past two weeks. I would like to apologize to everyone about the same. The reason ?

Well there was a flood here in Iloilo City and my room was completely under water. Woke up to a beautiful day and sunny day, went for a smoke outside. Suddenly there was water outside the building. Ran inside the room so that I could move my things on top of my bed so that nothing would get wet. Kept moving things for about 2 minutes and saw that there was water about 2 feet outside the door. The water has gushing in through the gap in the door. Opened the door to see that the sofa, tables and chairs outside were floating around. I took my laptop and went to the second floor. By this time the water was up to my neck. Tried to save some things of my neighbor but lost all my things in the process.

The water rose to more than a floor high and there was all kinds of things floating around. Managed to pull in a big bottle of mineral water which helped us survive till the water went down the following day.

The room and everything in it was covered in about 3 feet of mud. Lost most of my belongings. There was no electricity for almost 2 weeks. Finally after a week of cleaning was able to move back into my room. The laptop and internet is working from today. Hope to start blogging again in a day or two.

Please stay with me through this unfortunate incident.

Post from: Alfred's Tech Blog

3:05
Good Reads from Blogosphere - Link Attack
» ‎ -| Life Rocks! 2.0 |-

Its been a pretty long time since I published good reads from the blogosphere. So continuing this series again, here are some of the good articles from the blogs I read regularly. Dont forget to add these blogs to your feed reader.

Let a Monkey Handle Your Music Collection – Madhur reviews one of the good media organizer, Media Monkey

BgPatterns: Perfect Background Pattern Tool for Web Designs – Ram from Teknobites tells about tool for background pattern for themes.

FreeCalc: A Better Calculator for Windows – Keith informs us about the a free Calculator application for Windows.

Tumblweed - Tumblr Microblogging Desktop Client- Syahid tells about microblogging client Tumblweed.

How to browse in Firefox 3 without Leaving a Trace? – Stealther – Joel blogs about Firefox add-on for private browsing with leaving any trace.

Do You Know This New StumbleUpon Feature ? – Jeet tells us about the new features in Stumble Upon

Embed RSS feeds quickly in your site with Feed Source- Shankar informs us how to embed RSS feeds on blogs.

Hope you enjoyed reading these articles.

©2008 Life Rocks! 2.0. All Rights Reserved. The use of this feed on other websites is strictly prohibited.
.

1:25
Remove the Location Bar Star in Firefox
» ‎ gHacks technology news
The star in the Firefox 3 location bar can be used to bookmark a website quickly. A white star is indicating that the page has not been bookmarked yet while a yellow star is indicating that the page is already in the bookmarks. Some users prefer the old way of adding bookmarks by using the shortcut CTRL D.

If you are one of the users who prefers the old way and wants to get rid of the star which does not have another function than the ones described above you can do that by adding an entry to the userChrome.css file in the Firefox profile.

Just add the line #star-button {display:none !important;} to the end of that file to remove the star from Firefox 3. The Mozilla Knowledgebase is explaining how you can find the Firefox profile folder.

Tags: firefox, firefox tips, location bar, mozilla, userchrome
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0:20
Improve your Flickr Experience - Spell with Flickr
» ‎ -| Life Rocks! 2.0 |-

Spell with Flickr is a free little program that asks users to type in whatever they want to, then matches each letter of that word with letter pictures straight from Flickr. So the result of the word typed by user will be images uploaded to Flickr. Here is what we got when searched for Life Rocks.

Once you get the images, you can click on each image to change it. This means new images for the particular letter clicked is changed. You can copy paste the code and insert this into your blog or website.

Spell with Flickr is definitely an interesting tool to create images and headers with a difference.

Spell with Flickr

©2008 Life Rocks! 2.0. All Rights Reserved. The use of this feed on other websites is strictly prohibited.
.

July 05, 2008
22:45
Web Based Time Management and Analytic Application
» ‎ gHacks technology news
Rescue Time is a web based time management and analytic application that collects its data from a software called Data Collector that is available for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OSX and even Linux. This is a huge advantage over other time management applications that require manual input of the data. Rescue Time collects the data automatically as long as the Data Collector is running in the background.

Statistics and Information can be accessed on the Rescue Time website that displays reminds a little bit of Google Analytics. It displays all kind of information such as the total time spend working, the most popular applications and websites, top tags and even goals that can be set in the application.

Applications and sites can be tagged which is useful to combine them if they are related. The tag image editor could for instance be linked to Adobe Photoshop, GIMP and a Photoshop Tutorial website on the Internet. The user would then have the option to view the time spend with each application separately or together by looking at the tag.

Goals can be set and tracked in the application and goal alerts can be send by email and SMS to the user. Goals are related to tags. It is for instance possible to set a goal to spend less than one hour per day on entertainment sites or at least two hours updating your blogs.

There is also a summary RSS feed for goals to keep track of them that way. New users can take a look at a tour or various tutorials that explain concepts. One interesting feature that I left out is the group feature which is a Pay to use feature.

The service is aimed at business groups and can be used in a similar way to track time management and analyse the work flow, only that it is taking into consideration every member of the group.
Tags: data collector, efficiency, rescue time, team management, time analysis, time management
Related posts
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22:32
Gernova Keylock
» ‎ gHacks technology news
Gernova Keylock is a specialized software to detect keyloggers on a system. Keyloggers are used to log user input which includes urls that the user enters as well as usernames, passwords and even information like credit card data or account numbers. The application is portable and can be run from any location.

It’s unfortunately only available in German but since it does not require lots of user input it can be valuable for non-German speakers as well. The only required input is a click on the button “Suchlauf Starten” to start the scan of the system. A check of the box below that button will perform a long scan of the system that requires a reboot.

Once started the application moves the mouse around and tests several behaviors. After a while it asks the user to input text. This happens three times to see if any of the running processes are reacting on the data input.

In the end all potentially dangerous applications are listed. The software seems to have troubles with Mozilla software because it did list several Firefox and Thunderbird files as potentially dangerous. The most dangerous files are listed at the top with their system path.
Tags: keylock, keylogger, Security, system-scan, trojans, Windows, worms
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17:32
Create New Folders Quickly
» ‎ gHacks technology news
Creating multiple folders in Windows at once is not really enjoyable because Windows itself does not provide a shortcut key or way to create folders quickly. New folders can be created with a right-click in the folder or by clicking on the File menu in Windows.

The free software BX New Folder (download)adds a system wide shortcut to create folders in Windows Explorer quickly. The F12 key can be used to create a new folder in Windows Explorer quickly. A menu pops up after pressing the F12 key that displays the current folder and provides a form field where the user can enter the new folder name.

The new folder will be opened directly in Windows Explorer if the user is pressing the Shift key during creation.

I would not run the application all of the time but it does come in handy if multiple folders have to be created, especially if a complex folder structure has to be created.
Tags: folders, software, Windows, windows tips, windows-explorer
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15:42
Keep a Record Of All Things You Do On the Computer & the Web
» ‎ Digital Inspiration

There are so many things you do on the computer at the same time.

You watch videos on YouTube, reply to emails, write Word documents, upload photos, listen to MP3 music, play games, read blogs, chat with friends, search the web, share files and so much more.

So here are some free software programs / web tools that help you know exactly how you spend time in front of the computer – they record all computer activity including the websites you visit, the applications you run, etc.

Debut Video Capture – This is like an internal surveillance camera for your computer that runs in the background and can record a movie of everything you do on the desktop.

Unlike other screencasting software, Debut is light-weight and would therefore work just fine on even low-end machine.

Wakoopa – Available for Windows PC and Mac, Wakoopa will help you understand how you spend time with different software applications and games that are installed on the computer.

Since Wakoopa stores all your software logs online, it can track your application usage across multiple computers as well.

Thumbstrips – This is especially useful for Wilfers who surf the web using Firefox. ThumbStrips captures screenshot images of web pages that you visit inside Firefox.

It them put these images in an horizontal strip of images arrange in the order in which they were take. You can also think of ThumbStrips as a visual browser of your web history.

RescueTime – Available for Windows, Mac and Linux systems, RescueTime is an impressive software for tracking computer usage and other online activity.

Like Wakoopa, Rescue Time runs a small monitor in the background that periodically uploads your activity log on the web. Thus you can access the information from any computer that’s connected to the web.

Rescue Time will show you the exact time you spend on different websites or with each software. Best of all, you may setup Goals and Email alerts to get more productive.

For example, you can set a goal that says "I want to spend less than 1 hour per day on Google Talk” – if you cross that limit, you’ll get an email alert. Highly recommended.

Related: Block Websites That Waste Your Time

Keep a Record Of All Things You Do On the Computer & the Web - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS

13:31
Holidays!
» ‎ gHacks technology news
Well it’s finally time for me to go out and spend some time without sitting 16 hours at a computer desk. I will be going on a short trip to the North Sea for the next seven days starting today and I’m surprised that the sun is shining. I’m usually a person with bad luck when it comes to holidays, always raining like hell even in Summer. We will see about that though, I’m suspicious

I scheduled several articles for the time that I’m away and will log in every day with my Notebook to check emails and write an article or two if something catches my interest but do not expect the usual amount of articles in the time because I really need some rest to fill my energy level.

The picture is just one picture of the North Sea, not the actual location that I will be visiting.

It will be a family vacation and unfortunately not everyone can come on this trip. Some have to stay at home. I’m still looking forward to it and hope that the sun will not stop shining in the next seven days. Love you all, take care!
Tags: ghacks, north sea, vacation
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12:33
Make Full Backup of Your Ipod, USB Flash Drive and MP3 Players By Imaging
» ‎ Raymond.CC Blog

Creating full Windows backup by imaging using Norton Ghost, Acronis TrueImage, Macrium Reflect and etc is pretty common for advance computer users. When your system is corrupted and unable to boot, all you need to do is just boot up the computer with the imaging software, locate the image and it will automatically restore your system back to the time when you created the image.

Usually imaging is created for the whole hard drive or partition but not a few files or folders. Problem with some imaging software such as Macrium Reflect is it doesn’t allow creating images for USB flash drive or MP3 players. Although the space in USB Flash drives and MP3 players is not as big as computer hard drives, it’d still be nice to create a full backup of it and then saving it as single image file.

Here is a free tool which you can use to create images of USB memory sticks and MP3 players.

USB Image Tool can create images of USB memory sticks and MP3 players, that are mounted as USB drives. It allows you switch between images with different music styles on your MP3 Player or to make an exact backup image of your USB Stick.

USB Image Tool Features:

create image files of USB drives

restore images of USB drives

compressed image file format

show USB device information

manage favorite USB images

I’ve tried creating a full image backup on my 2GB Kingston DataTraveler USB flash drive using USB Image Tool. It took about 3 minutes to create a non-compressed full backup .img file. As for a compressed image file, it took longer because of the time taken to compress the .img file to .imz. USB Image Tool uses XZip 1.3 compression routines based on Info-ZIP. XZip 1.3 by Lucian Wischik, Hans Dietrich. If you have a 2GB USB flash drive and you’ve only used up to 900MB of the space, the uncompressed backup image file size will still be around nearly 2GB. Reason is it copies everything on your USB flash drive including the empty space.

USB Image Tool requires the .NET Framework 2.0 and runs on Windows XP/Vista. Please take note that Windows 2000 is not supported. The usbit32.dll included in the archive must be in the same directory as the EXE file.

[ Download USB Image Tool ]

Technorati Tags: usb, image, backup, restore, ipod

11:10
Format Factory
» ‎ gHacks technology news
Format Factory is a software that can convert most media file types into different file types. It supports converting between various image, audio and video formats as well as converting to mobile formats and DVD / CD conversions. This broad functionality might make it interesting to some users.

The application was designed with ease of use in mind, especially the conversions can be handled without knowing anything about bitrates, formats and frames. If a user wants to convert videos into mp4 format he simply selects a desired quality and size or picks a device like the PSP or iPod that he wants to view the video on. Experienced users can select the custom settings which give access to all video parameters of the target video.

Format Factory supports batch conversions and multiple files and even folders can be picked at once to be added to the processing queue. It is even possible to mix file formats in the queue, everything is handled quite well by the software.

If you play around with Format Factory for a while you notice several “nice to have” features that have been added. Tag lines can be added to images that are converted for instance and it’s up to the user to pick a font, size, color and text of the tag line.

I downloaded some hiqh quality flash video files of Gametrailers.com and converted them in the application. I was surprised at the speed of the conversion. It’s fast and efficient from what I can tell.
Tags: converter, file convert, format factory, software, video converter, Windows
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8:27
Backup your USB Drives with USB Image Tool
» ‎ -| Life Rocks! 2.0 |-
USB Image tool is a freeware to create an image of USB drives, mp3 players or anything that has been plugged into the USB port. It allows you switch between images with different music styles on your MP3 Player or to make an exact backup image of your USB Stick. This process of creating image is different from copying files from USB drives to your hard disk. Here the complete files in the USB drive is made into a single file which can be burn to CD or DVD.

Features
- Create image files of USB drives
- Restore images of USB drives
- Compressed image file format
- Gives USB device information
- Manage the USB images
USB Image Tool requires the .NET Framework 2.0 and Windows XP/Vista. The usbit32.dll included in the archive must be in the same directory as the EXE file.

Download USB Image Tool [Via DownloadSquad ]

©2008 Life Rocks! 2.0. All Rights Reserved. The use of this feed on other websites is strictly prohibited.
.

7:28
Monthly Highlights - June 2008
» ‎ CypherHackz.Net
June 2008 Monthly Highlights:
- Bored? Let’s play The Putty Puzzle game!
  Play online puzzle game. Very interesting…
- Delete or Erase files with Eraser
  Use Eraser if you want to wipe out your confidental data completely.
- StaffCop - Network, Computer and Employee Monitoring Software
  A very dangerous monitoring software to employees.
More interesting post in my Archive page.

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3:02
Know more about me
» ‎ Techie Buzz
Just updated my personal home page with several details you should know about me.

I always want to be open about, who I am and what I do, so go ahead and know more about me by visiting this page. I actually found time to do it.. Finally!!!. Go ahead and visit it and let me know your views.
Technorati Tags: About Me,Keith Dsouza,keithdsouza.com

© Keith Dsouza for Techie Buzz, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us

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0:49
Encrypt your Files on the Fly with TrueCrypt
» ‎ -| Life Rocks! 2.0 |-

TrueCrypt is a free Open Source software application used for on-the-fly encryption. On-the-fly encryption means that data are automatically encrypted or decrypted right before they are loaded or saved, without any user intervention. Data on the encrypted volume cannot be read (decrypted) without using the correct password/keyfile(s) or correct encryption keys.It can create a virtual encrypted disk in a file (container), which can be mounted as if it were a real disk.

On the Fly encryption process means files are encrypted or decrypted while being copied or opened and this process is done in the RAM. For example when you are opening an encrypted video file in media player after providing the passkey, it is decrypted at the same time it starts playing the decrypted portion. The decrypted portion of the video is kept in the RAM. This process is called on-the-fly encryption/decryption and it works for all file types.

It can create a virtual encrypted disk in a file (container), which can be mounted as if it were a real disk.TrueCrypt also supports device-hosted volumes, which can be created on either an individual partition or an entire disk. TrueCrypt never saves any decrypted data to a disk – it only stores them temporarily in RAM (memory). Even when the volume is mounted, data stored in the volume is still encrypted. When the system is restarted or power is switched off, then the decrypted files are not available. To make them accessible again, you have to mount the volume and provide the correct password.

Download TrueCrypt

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0:17
Make Gmail the default Firefox 3 Mail Client
» ‎ gHacks technology news
If you are one of the users who is not using a desktop mail client anymore but one who relies on online mail clients such as Gmail then you might like the following tip coming directly from the official Gmail blog. It is possible, and pretty easy, to make Gmail the default Firefox 3 Mail client. The default client is the one that is loaded whenever a mailto link is clicked in Firefox 3.

To do that you need to complete the following steps. Head over to Gmail and sign in as usual. Once that is done paste the following line of Javascript code into the location bar of Firefox 3 and hit enter. This will add Gmail as one additional protocol handler for the mailto protocol:javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto","https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s","Gmail")

A line will appear on top of the screen asking if you want to add Gmail as an application for mailto links. A click on Add Application adds the handler, a click on the X button closes the request and changes nothing.

Now head over to Tools > Options > Applications in Firefox 3 and filter for the mailto protocol. Use the drop down menu on the right side to select Gmail as the default client for mailto links and make sure to hit ok to confirm the change. Congratulations, you just added Gmail as the default Firefox 3 Mail Client.
Tags: Email, firefox 3, firefox tips, gmail, google-mail, mailto
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July 04, 2008
23:27
Why Twitter Needs to Scale Horizontally, not Vertically?
» ‎ Techie Buzz
When I had heard about twitter initially the question that had popped in my mind was “What the hell is twitter?”, at this point the question I have in my mind is “What the hell is twitter doing?”, though after two years the question has not changed drastically but the meaning definitely has.

There have been several downtimes with twitter of late and we even showed you the funny way you can take in the downtimes, but this problem is serious and nevertheless needs a bit of thinking by the folks at twitter. They have to sit down and think how they can grow horizontally by supporting everything that they have right now, before some other service bulldozes them to death.

There has been a exponential growth of people who have started using twitter in the past 6 months and the infrastructure twitter had in place has simply collapsed. Can we blame that on bad specifications they had in the first place? Absolutely no, twitter was doing fine just 6 months ago, the sudden surge of usage has almost led them to their knees.

In my opinion I blame twitter team for not sitting down and thinking about scalability, adding new hardware to a system definitely does not solve scalability problems as many of you perceive, if the underlying software needs upgrading no matter how many servers you keep on adding, you are bound to fail.

A example where hardware can only scale as good as the software is, can be accomplished by having a PC with a Quad 2 Core processor and 4 GB ram running on a Windows 98 operating system, of course Windows 98 would never be able to utilize the hardware capabilities, because the underlying software is incapable of doing it. You would have to upgrade your operating system to XP 64 bit or Windows Vista before you can ensure full utilization of your hardware.

There have been several instances in my IT career of 8 years, where people have simply changed the underlying software and database to solve scalability issues. So Ruby on Rails had to go a long time ago and be replaced by a more scalable software like Java or Python which would do good in the long term. This exact question about scalability with ROR had been talked about in a interview with a twitter developer back in March 2007.

On the other hand I do not have any issues with using MySQL and PostgreSQL, and have been using for several of the applications I create, but using it has led me to a conclusion that it’s simply not scalable in a larger environment, replacing the database with something like Oracle will do a world of good.

So drawing a end to my ranting, I have to say that twitter needs to get its underlying software scalable before allowing any more new developers to tap into their API, just lock the API down and get working on your own software. This may piss off several developers but given a month or two, once twitter makes the underlying changes everyone will be happy.

Do you have your own opinions about this, let me know through your comments.
Technorati Tags: Twitter,Twitter Scalability,Twitter Growth,Twitter Rantings

© Keith Dsouza for Techie Buzz, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us

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22:23
Explore Digital Inspiration Readers on Google Earth
» ‎ Digital Inspiration

Around 1,500 readers have put their names on the Digital Inspiration Map. You can explore the complete list of people on either Google Maps or Google Earth.

The blue pins represent males while the pink ones represent female readers. You can click the pins to know more about that person like his / her name, Blog URL, etc.

If you missed adding your name earlier , please go to digitalinspiration.com, search your location on the Google Map and click “Add”. Thank you.

Find Our Blog Readers on Google Maps or Google Earth - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS

21:30
Monitor your Internet Connection With BitMeter II
» ‎ -| Life Rocks! 2.0 |-
BitMeter II is a free bandwidth monitoring tool which displays the download and upload speed of your Internet connection graphically. It allows you to visually monitor your Internet connection by displaying a scrolling graph that shows your upload and download speed over time. It has different colors on the graph which represent your upload and download speeds, the display updates every second, and the current speeds are also displayed numerically.

The data shown in each of the graphs is also available numerically, and can be exported to a spreadsheet for detailed analysis. BitMeter also has an Alerts feature by which you will be notified when you have uploaded/downloaded a certain amount, or if your speed goes above or below any limit that you specify.

Other features of BitMeter;
- Audio notification at regular and also about upload and download limits
- Animated System Tray icon shows upload and download speeds
- Connection Speed Helper
- Change graph type
- Configure System Tray tooltip information
- Manual and automatic backup options of configuration and traffic history information.
BitMeter also has a web interface and you can check the demo from here. BitMeter has a lot of other handy features which will help you to keep track of your Internet usage.

Download BitMeter

©2008 Life Rocks! 2.0. All Rights Reserved. The use of this feed on other websites is strictly prohibited.
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20:30
Are you running the latest browser version?
» ‎ gHacks technology news
In a recently released research paper Stefan Frei, Thomas Dübendorfer, Gunter Ollmann and Martin May analyzed Google Search Engine logs between January 2007 and June 2008 to understand the web browser threat. The research paper brought up some interesting figures including worldwide browser usage, number of users with the latest version of the browser and the share of the most secure browser version.

According to their research Internet Explorer is leading the field with a market share of 78.3% followed by Firefox with 16.1%, Safari with 3.4% and Opera with 0.8%. This means in daily numbers 1108 million Internet Explorer, 227 million Firefox, 48 million Safari and 11 million Opera browsers.

If you analyze that data to find out how many of the users are using the latest version of the browser the picture changes drastically and provides another explanation why Internet Explorer is still the number one target for malicious software.

Only 52.5% of all Internet Explorer users are running the latest browser version compared to 92.2% of all Firefox users, 90.1% of the Opera users and 70.2% of the Safari users. The numbers are assuming that the latest version of the browser is the most secure one.

This leads to my initial question. Are you running the latest browser version of the browser that you are using ?
Tags: firefox, internet-explorer, opera, safari, vulnerability, web threat
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19:30
Free Advanced Internet Filtering Software- Naomi
» ‎ -| Life Rocks! 2.0 |-
Naomi is a free web filtering application, featuring a parental control mechanism to protect kids from online abuse. It keeps track of all the visited website and filters the Internet traffic to the computer and blocks out obscene, pornographic and other unwanted sites to be accessed.

Naomi does not rely on a simple list of banned sites; instead, it examines in real-time all the data being transmitted and received through any Internet application - such as web browsers, chat programs, news readers, etc.

The filtering technology employed in Naomi features:
- Heuristic analysis capable of recognizing new material automatically.
- Semantic analysis of web pages contents and analysis of their addresses and links.
- Recognizes all the major languages.
- Recognizes ICRA labeling system.
- Monitoring is not limited to web sites, but covers the whole local Internet traffic.
- Works with all service providers and software applications, and does not alter settings.
- Allows blocking of file-sharing applications.
- Password-protected.
- Easy to use: does not require configuration.
- Can be used on slow connections
Naomi is supported on Windows XP, 2000 and NT.

Download Naomi

©2008 Life Rocks! 2.0. All Rights Reserved. The use of this feed on other websites is strictly prohibited.
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18:33
Find Publication Date of Web Pages In Google Search Results
» ‎ Digital Inspiration

While you cannot sort Google search results by date, there’s a new feature in Google that makes it easy for you to ascertain the exact date when a particular web page was published on the Internet.

As you may have guessed by looking at the screenshot, Google now displays the actual publication date of a web page in the search results pages - see example.

The publication date here refers to the day when that web page was uploaded by the webmaster / blogger on the web. It can therefore be different from the day when that page was first spotted or indexed by Google spiders.

Some more examples of dates appearing in Google search results. This data is so handy because, with a simple glance, you can filter web pages that are old or published during a certain period.

Google is probably using the data available in XML sitemaps (or RSS feeds) to ascertain the publishing date of a web page.

That may be a reason why you get to see publication dates of mostly blog pages in Google or sites that publish feeds like Techmeme, New York Times, Twitter, CNET or even Digg.

If you like to see publication dates of web pages in Google that are not available by default, go to the advanced search page and select a time period from the Date drop-down (say ‘past year’).

Now when you perform a search, Google will display a date next to each of the search results – see example.

This is the day when Google spiders first discovered the corresponding web page. It may not be same as the publication date but always very close.

Find Publication Date of Web Pages In Google Search Results - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS

17:30
Microsoft Color Control Panel Applet for Windows XP
» ‎ gHacks technology news
Designers want to make sure that the colors of a product look like they were intended to look. This would make sure that a user watching a commercial on TV and a user watching the same commercial on Youtube or a user watching a print ad and an Internet ad would see matching images. We are basically talking about any two devices that are somehow connected to each other, this could also be text or images on the computer and printer or images from a digital camera and the computer.

That’s where Color Management comes into play which makes sure that the conversion between formats yields the desired results. Microsoft (via Shell City) released a software named Microsoft Color Control Panel Applet for Windows XP which makes it possible to add additional Color Management Modules to Windows XP.

This is probably only interesting to users who are working with applications that install their own Color Management Modules. Photoshop does for instance. Some modules can also be downloaded from the Internet. Adobe is offering a download of the Adobe Color Management Module on their website.

The Microsoft Color Control Panel Applet is located in the Control Panel. To start it open the Control Panel, locate the Appearance and Themes menu and click on Open Color. A validation of the operating system is required before the software can be downloaded from the Microsoft website.
Tags: color control, color management, Color Management Modules, microsoft, software, Windows
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15:24
Bloggers Write Text Backwards to Bypass Web Filters in China
» ‎ Digital Inspiration

Bloggers and journalists in China are using a novel approach to bypass Internet filters in their country – they write backwards